MOScholars isn’t a hypothetical policy experiment anymore—it is a rapidly scaling alternative for families across our state. In just four years, student participation has gone from just over 1,300 students to nearly 6,500. The state treasurer’s office reported a massive surge in applications early this spring, indicating that even more families would like to participate in the program this fall.

It is likely that the number of scholarships will expand even further in the near future. Governor Kehoe recently announced that Missouri will opt into a new federal tax credit program, allowing any U.S. taxpayer to redirect up to $1,700 of their federal liability toward school choice initiatives in any participating state, including Missouri.

When we fund students rather than systems, we create an environment where every child has a path to success. The legislature’s decision to back the growing demand for MOScholars with a $60 million commitment shows that parental empowerment is no longer a fringe priority. Now, the focus must shift to ensuring this funding flows transparently, efficiently, and directly into the hands of the parents who know their children’s needs best.

The post The $10 Million Budget Boost for MOScholars Is a Win for Missouri Families appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For years, the education establishment in Missouri has relied on a predictable playbook. Whenever state test scores drop or national rankings look bleak, we are told that the data don’t capture the whole picture, or that a new bureaucratic report card will soon show things are turning around. We are urged to wait, to invest more taxpayer money, and to trust the system.

But a newly released look at the numbers from a joint Harvard and Stanford project strips away the capacity for spin. According to the report, Missouri’s reading scores, which declined substantially during COVID, have continued to fall since 2022. We now rank 26th of 38 states (with usable data) in academic growth in math and 28th of 35 states in reading. In both reading and math, Missouri students are more than a half of a year behind where they were performing in 2019 (0.58 grade equivalent and 0.66 grade equivalent, respectively).

The authors point out that the pandemic slide was actually the acceleration of a trend that started around 2013. The pandemic simply poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning.

This scorecard release comes at a critical time for Missouri education policy. Recently, we’ve watched efforts to implement clear, transparent A–F school report cards go sideways in Jefferson City, bogged down by attempts to shift focus away from academic achievement and instead prioritize ambiguous school climate surveys. Fortunately, the governor’s executive order mandating report cards with letter grades will still be implemented.

Similarly, efforts to bring real accountability to early reading were derailed this legislative session. Lawmakers couldn’t commit to rigorously applying the science of reading or to making sure that students who can’t read aren’t socially promoted to grades where they will struggle to understand their textbooks.

If we want to reverse this generation-long decline, we must stop protecting the status quo. The folks in charge of public education need to be held to the highest standards of accountability. Furthermore, we must empower parents with robust educational choice, forcing the state system to compete and innovate rather than take families for granted. If we don’t make changes, we’ll only continue to fall further behind.

The post Missouri Students Continue to Fall Behind appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Josh Bandoch, author of “How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion,” about why leading with data and logic is often the wrong approach to changing minds. Drawing on more than a decade of research across psychology, neuroscience, economics, and political science, and experience writing speeches for senior government officials and advising executives, Bandoch explains how the human brain feels before it reasons, why persuasion is about shared action rather than winning, and what policy advocates get wrong when trying to move legislators. They also discuss the Granny Test, how to frame arguments around your audience’s moral values, the role of storytelling, and more.

Find the book

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

 Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00): So excited today to talk to Josh Bandoch, author of the soon to be out — or maybe by the time this airs, out — book “How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion.” I want to say it correctly, which is awesome. I was thinking about this topic — we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording — because we’re both right in the middle of legislative sessions. And in addition to being an author, you work in the policy advocacy space. Is this book meant to sort of address that space, or is it for a more general audience? Because we all want to get what we want, right?

Josh Bandoch (00:37): Absolutely. The book is written for a general audience. It will help folks in the policy space, but also in business, sales, or marketing. The goal of the book is to help people get what they want through persuasion. And for me, persuasion is the difference between having a good idea — whether it’s a good policy idea or a good product idea — and having others embrace that idea.

Susan Pendergrass (01:02): Yeah, I think that’s so important because oftentimes — well, speaking for myself — I come up with policy ideas that I think are great ideas, but I come from data, evidence, research. Let me write a 20-page paper on it and do a statistical model to convince you. And I think that based on what I’ve read in your book, you would say that might not be my strongest approach.

Josh Bandoch (01:24): Well, those things are necessary. Data is necessary, and folks who work at think tanks are paid to do research. I work at a think tank — the Platte Institute — and that is what we’re paid to do. But when I think about persuasion, I start by trying to understand the contours of how the human brain actually operates.

The challenging reality for a lot of folks in the think tank space who are paid to think — maybe you’re a consultant or whatever — is that since we’re paid to think, we think that means logic, data, and reasoning are the way to get what we want. The most challenging reality I’ve encountered is that this is how the human brain is wired — not just my brain or your brain, Susan, but all 8 billion of us on this planet. We feel first, then reason. Sometimes it’s feel, and we never even get to the reasoning. We’ve all been there. That means persuasion actually starts with feelings.

I know the folks in your audience who love the work you do — and you guys do great work — and love the research are going to say, no, that can’t be true. Well, it’s what all the neuroscience says. So it actually means that the logic-first approach to persuasion, whether in policy and think tank land or in sales or anything, is actually illogical — because that’s not how the brain works. The brain works feel first, then reason. We do reason. It’s just that we have to start with feelings.

Susan Pendergrass (03:06): So give me an example. We’ve been working for several years on a policy in Missouri that would allow parents to choose where their kids go to public school — just public school, open enrollment. And we get so much pushback from legislators and others who say this is going to lead to basically the destruction of the public education system. That’s their feeling. And I can provide a lot of evidence from other states that have done it for decades — even our neighbors in Kansas, not so much Illinois — and say it hasn’t happened, but they still believe it. I feel like I can’t put the words in the right order to make them understand what I’m trying to do. So what do I need to do differently?

Josh Bandoch (03:47): Yeah, so there are two parts here. First, you just observe what somebody’s feeling. Because if somebody’s feeling great and they’re inclined to do what you want to do, it’s easy, right? In this case — this is a perfect example — they have negative feelings towards the policy you want to advance. So the first thing you have to do is observe, understand, and address those feelings directly. When you’re in these conversations, what is an example of a raw, visceral negative feeling that somebody expresses?

Susan Pendergrass (04:19): They’ll say in our small rural communities, the high school is the center of it — it’s the heart and soul of the community. And if we let kids out — even though it’s the heart and soul — they’ll all want to leave. And if that happens, not only will the school close, but that will kill the community. That’s what they believe. It’s not reality, but I struggle when I go to testify at a legislative hearing to not sound like I’m just putting facts in front of them and ignoring what they feel. I don’t know how to counter that with reassurance and say, that’s just not true.

Josh Bandoch (05:09): So let me briefly walk you through the process so your audience can follow along. Start with feelings — and what you have to do is generate persuasive feelings. What feelings are persuasive? Ultimately, I think it’s positive feelings. Every time I ask an audience who the most persuasive people they can think of are, a couple of people come to mind: Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK. They generated positive feelings. And you do that especially by appealing to your audience’s moral values, which in this case might be different from yours. And then the most effective way to wrap it all up is a story.

So how do you start this process? When you’re talking to folks in the community, or to lawmakers, or to local elected officials who you’d like to see change their stance, start by asking them how they feel. It just unlocks a totally different pathway in the brain.

Susan Pendergrass (06:05): But when you’re saying this — and when I was looking through your book — I was wondering: in today’s political environment, I feel like persuasion is being used a lot less, and people are just making statements and not really defending them, just saying that’s the fact because I said it. Especially with how vitriolic our politics has become in the last decade since you started this research, do you think there’s still a good solid place for the art of persuasion? Or are we just going to stand with our arms crossed and agree to disagree?

Josh Bandoch (06:35): So at one level, the answer is absolutely yes, because humans haven’t evolved radically over the last 10 years. Everything in the book is backed by a tremendous amount of research, largely based on how the human brain works, and then lots of practice. At another level, we do have real reason to be concerned, which is what you just pointed to — is persuasion still possible in today’s political environment?

Look, there are only two paths forward. One is that we continue to relish in all the negativity, toxicity, and polarization, or we step back from it. I don’t think, aside from a couple of folks who spend their lives on X, that anybody is really going to say our politics are healthy. So it’s incumbent on us to have better methods to walk back from that, as opposed to just running down that toxic lane even further.

Susan Pendergrass (07:41): So in addition to what happens in state and federal legislative bodies, where I spend a lot of my brain power, how does somebody take the principles of your book and apply them in their personal life? Is this about manifesting goals, or how do they apply those same principles?

Josh Bandoch (08:00): Well, maybe I can sketch out briefly what some of the principles are so we can talk about them. The first step for persuasion — well, I guess two things. One is understanding what persuasion actually is, and I think even this is a mindset issue. We oftentimes think persuasion is about winning. And Susan, if I win against you, what does that make you?

Susan Pendergrass (08:17): A loser.

Josh Bandoch (08:18): That’s terrible, right? You’re a loser and you don’t want to work with me. So persuasion isn’t about winning. It’s not just about launching your logic at people — we’ve discussed that already. It’s not simply about convincing somebody. The Latin root of the word “convince” means to vanquish or to conquer, and conquest is barbaric. So what is persuasion? It’s about shared action — something we voluntarily do with others. That’s the shared part, and it’s action — it’s about getting things done. That’s already a much different understanding of persuasion.

When you bring that approach to your personal and professional endeavors, it’s different because you’re really trying to work with people and figure out how to move forward together. The first step of persuasion for me is adopting what I call the persuader’s mindset — it’s about them, not you. That’s why when we talked about school choice in the community, it’s like, okay, what are their concerns? Take their concerns seriously. That applies in your personal life too — maybe you’re having a debate at home with your spouse or a friend or a child. You have to understand who they are and what they care about, and to the extent possible, proceed on their grounds, because they’re much more comfortable there. This applies to any situation you’re in, no matter what it is.

Susan Pendergrass (09:32): That’s awesome. And you mentioned professionally — sales. I feel like there are a lot of books on how to sell. How does your book differentiate from what’s come before?

Josh Bandoch (09:47): Well, a lot of folks — keeping it in the policy space — are trying to corner people into saying yes to something they otherwise wouldn’t say yes to. What I’m really trying to understand is what would motivate and excite somebody to work with me on something. And that requires generating the positive feelings I talked about, appealing to their morals, telling great stories, and some of the other things I get into in the book. But those are some of the big ones. And it all has to happen simply.

Susan Pendergrass (10:31): In a simple way, right? I’m not going to hold this against you, but I am a grandmother. And I did see the Granny Principle in the book — so explain what that is, because I want to remind myself of this principle a lot. I have a PhD in public policy. I’ve put a lot of years into studying what’s good and bad public policy. And every single year in the halls of Jefferson City, I just see bad public policy happen in the hallway. They’ll say, well, we’ll just give that part up and add this part. And I’m like, no, no, no — you basically just blew up the quality of what you were trying to do. And I see that if I’m coming from up here and things are happening on a completely different level, I’m spinning my wheels. I’m not furthering my goals of getting good public policy passed — which I believe, no matter who’s in the governor’s mansion or the White House, good policy is good policy. And I struggle to make it happen in Missouri. I think the Granny Principle could be part of my problem, so would you please explain what that is?

Josh Bandoch (11:32): Totally. The last chapter of the book — in some ways the least exciting but the most important — is called “Ace the Granny Test.” And what’s the Granny Test? Would your granny understand what you’re saying? You assume granny is a smart lady who is not an expert in any particular thing. So you have to explain things with clarity, simplicity, and precision.

One of the troubles we encounter in think tank land is that we love to dump tons of data and logic and reasoning and examples on people, and it’s overwhelming. We also encounter the curse of knowledge — we know so much that we kind of assume our audience does too. And we oftentimes think, well, they just don’t understand me, that’s their fault and their problem. No, no, no, no. It’s your fault and your problem, because they don’t understand you and they just move on with life.

When you talk to an elected official, you have about 60 seconds to capture their attention. Maximum. So if you’re not crystal clear and simple in how you explain things, they say in that typical apologetic way, well, thank you so much, I’ll take that into account — and then they move on. Clarity and simplicity are premium virtues in communications, and they require a lot of hard work to achieve. Can you distill your 30-page white paper into 30 seconds?

Susan Pendergrass (13:01): Yeah. I’m trying to do cards now — the most simple four-by-six with colors. And in their defense, I’m not coming down hard on legislators — they’re not specialists, they’re generalists. It might be education committee and transportation committee and appropriations, whatever. They have to know a lot of different areas, and even though Missouri and Illinois have long sessions — like five or six months a year — they have other lives much of the time. It is hard for them to grasp things in a short amount of time. I’ve had some back and forth with my colleagues who say we should still write high-level academic papers. I’m like, I’m doing four-by-six cards now. I’m sure there’s a middle ground there, but it’s hard to find.

Josh Bandoch (13:59): Well, the four-by-six is a great place to start. What’s your thesis? What are you trying to say? Can you get that into one sentence? Do you have a couple of key points you’d like to make? But then how do you turn that into something compelling? I would say you do at least one of two things. Ideally, you would have a story. If you’ve got 30 seconds to pitch school choice, you might start by saying, let me tell you a story about little Bobby or little Sally — this is what it meant to him, he was here and now he’s here — and you condense that story. Or you make a moral claim that’s going to grab their attention. People’s morals differ based on, roughly speaking, their politics, but you have to make a moral claim that’s going to resonate with them.

So if you’re talking to somebody on the left, their morals are sensitive to claims over equity. If you were talking to somebody in an urban school district and you wanted to get them to support school choice, and let’s say they’re on the left, you might say, look, our school system is deeply inequitable and we need to fix it. And they’re like, huh, yeah, it is — tell me more. You’ve got to figure out what you want to say, but then make sure you’re framing it in a way that is compelling for your audience.

Susan Pendergrass (15:15): So if folks want to find your book and learn how to get what they want, when and where will it be available?

Josh Bandoch (15:22): It’s available April 21st, and it’s available anywhere you can buy books — Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

Susan Pendergrass (15:24): And you said you spent 10 years researching this — tell me about it.

Josh Bandoch (15:33): Yeah, a combination of research and practice. Ten years of on-and-off reading as much as possible — psychology, neuroscience, primarily.

Susan Pendergrass (15:41): Yeah, that’s fascinating. It is — surprisingly, for what I do full time — an easy part to forget. I’ve always felt like if I just lay out facts and fair arguments, the rest will take care of itself.

Josh Bandoch (15:58): Well, those things are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. They’re necessary because our job, working at think tanks, is to make sure the foundation is strong. We have a policy recommendation, and we have to make sure we have really good reasons to think it’s going to be effective — that it’s been tested elsewhere, or all the data indicates this is probably going to work. That’s necessary. It’s not sufficient. The persuasion layer on top of that is what takes your good idea to a good idea somebody else wants to embrace.

Susan Pendergrass (16:30): Yeah, I think it’s great. Like you said, it’s helpful in so many parts of your life. It comes right up to the very edge of manipulation, but pulls back a little bit. It is helpful for getting what you want — whether you’re buying a car or agreeing with your spouse on the paint color for the wall. It’s a really smart approach.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast and telling us all about it. It’s fascinating stuff and I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Bandoch (16:58): It’s a pleasure, thank you so much.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post How to Think About Persuasion in Public Policy with Josh Bandoch appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For some reason, film tax credits remain popular in Jefferson City. They are much less popular with economists.

Missouri lawmakers are once again debating whether to extend the state’s film tax credit program. Earlier this month, I testified against legislation that would continue the subsidy. For those who don’t remember, this is a debate the state has already had.

Missouri operated a film tax credit program before ending it more than a decade ago. In 2010, the state’s Tax Credit Review Commission examined the program and concluded it served too narrow an industry to justify its cost to taxpayers. Lawmakers shut it down soon after. The idea never fully disappeared, though, and in 2023 the subsidy returned, this time with the promise of better results. The current program allows up to $16 million per year in credits for film and television productions.

So far, there is little evidence that anything has changed. Supporters point to production spending as proof that the program works. The Missouri Film Office reports that productions spent more than $40 million in the state in 2025 while receiving roughly $15.7 million in credits. But production spending is not the same as fiscal return. Much of that activity consists of temporary wages, lodging, equipment rentals, and other short-term expenses tied to a shoot. When filming ends, much of that spending leaves with it. What matters for taxpayers is how much tax revenue actually makes its way back to the state.

On that measure, film subsidies perform poorly almost everywhere they have been tried. Research summarized by the Tax Foundation estimates governments recapture between eight and twenty-eight cents in new tax revenue for every dollar of credit issued. Even Georgia, often cited as the model for film incentives, struggles to demonstrate that the program pays for itself. A 2020 performance audit by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts found that tax revenue generated by film production activity fell well short of the credits the state awarded.

There is also a basic budget reality lawmakers should keep in mind. Film tax credits are sometimes treated as something different than spending because the state only grants them after a production films in Missouri. But the fiscal effect is the same. Each credit issued is a commitment to collect less revenue in the future.

Meanwhile, the productions most closely associated with Missouri often film somewhere else entirely. A new HBO series set in St. Louis, DTF St. Louis, was filmed in Georgia. The Netflix series Ozark, which was set at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, was also largely filmed in Georgia.

Though it should go without saying, Missouri’s lawmakers should be focused on using state tax dollars as effectively as possible. And there’s no disputing that film tax credits have repeatedly failed that test. Extending the credit today would mean ignoring the state’s past experience and choosing to repeat it.

The post Missouri’s Film Tax Credits Still Don’t Add Up appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Todd Davidson, Vice President of Programs at the State Policy Network, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the think tank world. They explore what AI is good at and where it falls short, how organizations like the Show-Me Institute can use it to become more productive without losing their edge, why face-to-face relationships will only become more valuable as AI-generated content floods the internet, how a Hawaii think tank used an AI agent to help fire victims submit legislative testimony, what good policy looks like in an AI-driven energy landscape, and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00) Great, well, thanks so much for joining us this morning. Todd Davidson of the State Policy Network, to talk about the topic du jour: artificial intelligence. Thanks so much for coming on to talk about it. I’m afraid to even say anything out loud about AI because by next week it’ll be…

Todd Davidson (00:11) Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Susan Pendergrass (00:18) Nothing really ages — it changes so fast. But I did just read that Mark Zuckerberg has an AI agent who is performing his CEO duties for him. Did you see that? Why not, right?

Todd Davidson (00:28) I saw that, yeah. And then he can just kick back, go down to his Hawaii bunker and just let Facebook run itself.

Susan Pendergrass (00:37) Yeah, I mean, I still haven’t really dabbled in agentic AI, but I know it’s right there and I’m going to want to do it soon. We’re going to talk about AI in the think tank world, but I have to check legislation and hearings and see how those things are going every day. I can well imagine an AI agent doing that for me.

Todd Davidson (01:01) Yeah, if it’s properly trained. So ShowMe Institute, to give the audience broader context, is a member of State Policy Network, and we have sister organizations like ShowMe in states across the country. The Libertas Institute, which is based out of Utah, did exactly what you’re talking about. Connor Boyack, the CEO, built a legislative tracking system that then feeds into their scorecard where they keep track of legislation. He said it took him about eight hours of work to code the agentic AI, but now it does the work automatically. Of course it needs fine-tuning and always has a final human observer that verifies everything, but it’s being used for those purposes right now across the country.

Susan Pendergrass (01:59) So we’re in the think tank world, and it’s probably more of an art than a science at the state level. Tracking the policies — first of all, thinking about the policies that we think would be best for Missouri, then doing a bunch of research on those policies, then creating content on those policies, then trying to talk to legislators and hope that they see our point of view, and that they enact actual laws that reflect those policies. That’s a really labor-intensive job. Which parts of that could you see being picked up by AI?

Todd Davidson (02:33) I’m by no means an expert on AI, but I work with someone who is. What has been explained to me is that AI is very good at synthesizing information. It’s very good at predicting — it essentially predicts the next word. It takes all these inputs and predicts the next set of words, which comes out to us as sentences. So if you are able to give it certain inputs — say, I want you to look at these bills, I want you to look at these things — and give it a sort of walled garden, it can then be prompted to produce any type of analysis that you want. The reason you want that walled garden is because AI can still hallucinate. It can make stuff up. Actually, this just went viral last week: a lawyer down in Georgia went before the Georgia Supreme Court and had AI produce her entire argument. It cited five fictitious cases, and the judges called that out. So you have to give it constraints and say, here are the data inputs, now summarize this for me. And it can get you a pretty solid first draft of that summary. Of course, you’re still going to need a human to go through and edit it and add voice and texture to it. But summarizing that data, saying tell me which of these align with our principles or does not align with our principles — it would be very good at that kind of thing. What it’s not going to be able to do is the creative part. When you think about what is the policy that we want to design for Missouri, what does Missouri need — it’s not at the stage where it could do that. That’s where you would still want Show-Me Institute experts to be crafting those kinds of things. But if something’s already out there and existing, you can summarize it and score it based on criteria pretty easily.

Susan Pendergrass (04:35) So given how quickly firms are moving towards AI — and in fact mandating AI because it’s such a time saver and productivity increase — how does a think tank position itself in that world? There’s so much talk about AI just replacing all of our jobs. Maybe it does replace my job — I don’t know. I’ve heard podcasts generated by AI in my voice, so it could be doing this job right now. I would like to think it wouldn’t be as great, but how does a think tank position itself? What’s our value add in that scenario?

Todd Davidson (05:12) Start by going back to what your mission and objective is. ShowMe Institute — and by the way, I am a resident of Missouri and a big fan of the Show-Me Institute, both from my SPN perspective and from my Missouri resident perspective — we have principles: free markets, a robust civil society, a thriving economy. We want the feds to get out of the way in a lot of cases. We want the government to get out of the way. And then how we execute that mission is through policy change, mostly at the state level, though I know you also work at the local level. So state and local policy change is the objective. How do we go about that? We produce research and then we advocate — in some cases talking directly to policymakers, communicating out to the public through op-eds and things so that the public then talks to lawmakers. And ultimately we get policies passed that lower the income tax, reduce barriers to work, and provide more options for kids in schools. So what AI is going to do is make research and content much easier to produce. By research, again, I mean that summarization kind of research — it’s going to make that kind of stuff extremely easy for folks to produce. Everybody’s going to have a research assistant. What AI cannot do is personal relationships. It will never be able to do that. What it also cannot do is tour the entire state of Missouri, know all of the history and relationships and connections of people throughout the state. So I believe Show-Me Institute and all of the affiliates across the country that are state and local based are going to have an advantage because you’re in your community. You know people, you know policymakers, you know community leaders, you know people that are affected by your policies. And that’s something AI is not going to be able to do. AI can look at the statistics and arguments and academic literature, and it could put together a brief, and that could be useful. It would make your job more efficient — you’d be able to produce those things in a fraction of the time you do right now. But then with that extra time, I would use it to go out and build stronger relationships in the communities, and then use those relationships towards policy change.

Susan Pendergrass (07:51) What about grassroots? More grassroots-type stuff?

Todd Davidson (07:55) Grassroots very much. AI is going to have an interesting relationship with grassroots. In one way, it actually makes it easier for grassroots individuals to engage their legislature. On the other hand, it’s going to create a flood of grassroots engagement digitally. So face-to-face grassroots engagement is going to have more impact. I’ll tell you a story: Hawaii had the terrible fire that destroyed Lahaina a few years back. Hawaii has terrible building codes — it’s incredibly hard to build homes there. That town was completely destroyed, so the state needed to relax its building codes in order for homes to be rebuilt. Well, they weren’t making this change. Show-Me’s sister think tank, called the Grassroots Institute of Hawaii, built an AI platform that allowed individuals to submit testimony to the legislature. Testimony has a higher bar, right? You can email your lawmakers pretty easily, but testimony goes into the legislative record and has to follow a certain format and be structured in a certain way. That’s not something that grassroots individuals were very equipped to provide. So a think tank would typically provide the testimony and then get grassroots supporters to send emails to lawmakers. What Grassroots Institute of Hawaii did was build an AI agent so that an individual could say, “Hey, my house was burnt down, I need these things,” and the AI agent would turn that into testimony and submit it directly to the legislature. It resulted in a skyrocketing number of testimonies being filed. Because of that, the legislature said, “Wow, we’ve heard from 500 constituents — we’ve never heard from that many constituents before.” So they relaxed their regulatory regime, and now homes are being built in Lahaina much faster.

Susan Pendergrass (09:48) Did they know that AI was doing it? Were legislators thinking, okay, this is AI?

Todd Davidson (10:12) That is why they went through testimony. Legislators’ email inboxes — they’re not reading their emails anymore, right? They get thousands of them. But through testimony, the AI was not making up the stories. The people had to fill out the content and explain their story. The AI was just structuring it in a way to make sure that it got submitted as testimony. I do think that is a bit of an arms race. At some point the same thing that has happened with email will happen — there will just be thousands of pieces of testimony and you won’t be able to read all of them. So there was a bit of a first-mover advantage. And once that becomes ubiquitous, I do think what you predicted is going to happen, where legislators just say, well, this is AI-facilitated. And that’s where it’s going to have to go back to face-to-face, bringing those people in.

Susan Pendergrass (11:08) I think you’re absolutely right. As more video content comes out and we all realize it’s AI — I just don’t really believe that any videos are real anymore. I don’t really believe pictures are real. I don’t really believe music is real. And it doesn’t necessarily bother me that much, but I think because of that skepticism and unwillingness to believe in digital content, things happening in real life right in front of us are going to take on higher and higher value, so that we know for sure that if I’m speaking to a legislator, it is me saying it and what’s coming out of my head. That’s about the only way we’re going to know if something is real — or the default is just going to become AI-generated.

Todd Davidson (12:01) 100%, I absolutely agree. And that’s where I think organizations like ShowMe are well positioned. Because you’re in the state of Missouri, you can be in Jefferson City or you can be in St. Louis or Kansas City in those face-to-face relationships. It’s going to make your government affairs personnel far more valuable, your fundraisers who can be face-to-face with donors far more valuable, grassroots activists that are face-to-face. It’s going to put a premium on face-to-face interactions for sure. I agree — there’s going to be so much content out there. You’re still going to need content because that gives you credibility, it gives you what you’re going to talk about. But then you’ve got to pair that with the face-to-face interaction, otherwise it’ll just get ignored.

Susan Pendergrass (12:47) And you can definitely see the gap when people are generating stuff through AI and they don’t know the subject matter enough — like you said about the attorney. But there is definitely a role for humans to say, I mean, I do this all the time with AI: I’ll say give me five of these things, give me five infographics or something like that. But the human has to know which one is the best or which one makes the most compelling argument. AI simply really can’t do that. So while some people would love to believe that AI is going to run the world, I do believe there is an emerging role for human discernment to know which AI products are better than other AI products. Would you agree with that?

Todd Davidson (13:32) Yeah, 100%. I think the sweet spot is utilizing AI to make yourself more efficient or do things that you don’t like doing. But then that raises you up into that discernment phase where you’re the one making the call. I do this all the time — I’m having conversations with AI to increase the outputs. I should not spend any time making infographics. I’m not good at it. But I can have a conversation with AI where it produces that infographic much more effectively than I could. I’ve also found that, if you put the prompting on it, it can help you find those particular sources that you’re looking for. Say you want to write a survey on school choice research — it can help you gather all of those materials much faster. But then you have to make sure that it’s of high quality.

Susan Pendergrass (14:35) What do you think about the current pushback on AI-generated pictures? Do you think that is just a learning phase we all need to get through? Some top artists on Spotify have been determined to be AI-generated.

Todd Davidson (14:57) Really?

Susan Pendergrass (14:59) Yeah. The number two Christian artist is just AI, and across all genres there are artists with millions of subscribers who are just AI-generated music based on what AI knows we all like. So we do like it. Does it matter that there’s no real person writing the music? I don’t know.

Todd Davidson (15:12) It’s kind of sad. Yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (15:21) I know the initial reaction is, that’s sad. But then after a while you’re like, I don’t know.

Todd Davidson (15:26) There is going to be intense pushback to all things AI. AI is very unpopular right now. I saw some polling just last week that showed it is the number one concern of voters. There will be a populist pushback against AI. We’re seeing this pushback against the data centers. There’s even polling that showed a plurality of the population believes it’s immoral to use AI. And I think it gets at the core of some of what you’re talking about here — yes, there’s this very popular, satisfying music, but it loses some human element because there’s not a human behind it. I do think we’re going to see a lot of pushback to AI on multiple dimensions. There’s that cultural dimension. There’s the economic anxiety dimension right now: a fear that AI is driving up energy costs, a fear that AI could take my job. There’s going to be pretty significant pushback. Right now we’re mostly seeing that in anti-data center efforts, trying to stop the building up of data centers across the country. I was looking at some Democratic pollsters today who were pitching that Democrats should advocate for a guaranteed job, guaranteed income, guaranteed healthcare, and a guaranteed home if you lose your job to AI. That kind of populist messaging is going to resonate with a lot of the public. What is the response going to be to that? What are the other solutions that we could advocate for that both allow the continued growth and opportunity and also allow continued innovation around AI, because we’re going to need AI to continue to develop?

Susan Pendergrass (17:30) It’s already here. I mean, we’re doing this in reverse order. And I think my opinion is that massive new technologies always get pushback — like the car. People were on their horses, and then we started designing roads for cars. Calculators got a lot of pushback, the internet got a lot of pushback. But ultimately people decided that they liked it better. I think AI is the same — we just have to figure out how to work with it. And I know that it is threatening to take a lot of jobs, but I see it more as a good thing. It gives us an opportunity to become the expert over AI. AI is not going to be the expert — we still need the human component. Like you said, face-to-face interactions. Legislators are still going to know what Missourians want and how to represent their constituents, and those are real-world issues. The data center pushback is because I don’t want to look out my window and hear a buzz and see a data center — I don’t want all that land going to data centers. That’s a real-world, in-person issue. But I just think we’re going to have to learn to work with it. I don’t think robots are going to — maybe this is where I don’t want to say things out loud — but maybe the robots will take over the world, I don’t know. But personally I feel like it is helpful to get a lot more content out, because you don’t know what’s going to resonate with stakeholders. Whether it’s a video or an infographic or a report or a different type of content, the fact that we can generate these things much more quickly I think is a benefit to us, and it makes the in-person time more meaningful to me.

Todd Davidson (19:11) You’re absolutely right. When a new technology comes out there’s going to be pushback, and organizations like ours have to figure out what’s the policy framework that allows that innovation to thrive without getting in the way. And fortunately we have a lot of those policies already. Like Avery, your colleague at Show-Me Institute, talks a lot about energy. One of the biggest pushbacks on AI is that it’s driving up energy costs. There’s some research that shows that’s not quite what’s happening. What’s happening is a lot of green policies that got passed in the 2010s are coming to roost — the renewable portfolio standards and those things are really what’s driving up energy costs. But even still, what can we do to make energy more affordable and reliable, even with a bunch of data centers added to the grid? And Avery’s got good policy on this: expanding nuclear power, expanding the use of reliable energy sources.

Susan Pendergrass (20:23) It’s separating out consumer electricity from data center electricity. You can carve these things differently.

Todd Davidson (20:29) Yeah, that’s another one — where the data center has its own power source. So there are policies out there that can mitigate it. And on the job question, unfortunately AI is happening at the same time that we’re having a continued cost of living and inflation issue. It’s one more thing that is driving anxiety. It’s not the root cause of what’s going on — we’ve got other factors that we need to address to get inflation under control, particularly on the energy side.

Susan Pendergrass (21:08) Yeah, but I do think it’s great that we have so many opportunities to expand or improve how we do things. In our little corner of the world, which is think tanks, we’ve been doing things kind of the same way for a long time. So I think a new approach to how we do business is a welcome change, and I think we could be a lot more effective.

Todd Davidson (21:38) Yeah, I think we’re going to see far more productive think tanks on the research side. On the litigation side, I was talking to Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. They litigate a lot of cases. With the advent of AI, every lawyer essentially got a legal clerk right away. They went from nine lawyers and a handful of legal clerks to nine lawyers who each now have their own AI legal clerk. It’s dramatically expanded the number of cases they can take on. And the same thing on the research side. On the marketing side, production of content is going to be quite a bit easier and more cost effective as well.

Susan Pendergrass (22:26) Well, I appreciate having a chance to talk to somebody who has a positive perspective on it, because I do hear a lot of doom and gloom when it comes to AI. I was reminded by somebody that many of the scenarios in movies and books about AI are very dystopian, but perhaps it’ll be utopian. We don’t know. It’s all in how we approach it, right?

Todd Davidson (22:48) Yeah, it is. It’s going to be an exciting new world that we live in and we’re right on the frontier.

Susan Pendergrass (22:54) Anyone with little kids, like you — who knows what the world’s going to look like when they’re going to college. So you’ve got to stay flexible, right? Well, thanks so much, Todd. I appreciate you coming and talking to us about it. We’ll have to talk about it again sometime soon when the whole thing has changed.

Todd Davidson (23:02) Yep, stay flexible and always be learning. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post AI, Think Tanks, and the Future of Policy Work with Todd Davidson appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In Jefferson City, there have been questions about the balance between academic promotion and social promotion in K–12 schools. In particular, there have been concerns about the effects a third-grade retention policy could have on social settings in schools (such as having 16-year-olds attending middle school).

It is an understandable worry. The movie Billy Madison was made about this very idea. However, in the context of Missouri’s pending retention legislation, House Bill 2872 and Senate Bill 1442, there should not be concern about Adam Sandler remaining in classrooms for years and years.

Under both these bills, a third-grade student can be promoted to fourth grade if they pass the objective reading assessment at the end of third grade or qualify for a good-cause exemption. Amongst those exemptions is one for students who “have already been retained at least once in any of grades kindergarten through grade three.”

This exemption is important to note because it prevents a student from being retained multiple times in early grades. In the existing system, there are already students who have been retained in grades K–3. The potential change would simply be in the number of students who repeat a grade.

House Bill 2872 and Senate Bill 1442 would not create new social problems in schools. Instead, these bills would ensure that more students get the best chance to become confident, capable readers, while maintaining the balance between academic promotion and social promotion that already exists in Missouri’s education system.

The post Third-Grade Retention Will Not Recreate Billy Madison in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With Kansas City preparing to host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill to simplify food truck licensing in Jackson County. The proposal would allow vendors licensed by the county to operate in any municipality without additional city permits.

The change would remove a common barrier: multiple permits just to cross a city boundary.

The idea makes sense. But if it will help entrepreneurs and visitors during the World Cup, why should the same principle not apply across Missouri? As the Squirrel Nut Zippers sang, “If it’s good enough for Grandad, its good enough for me.”

Food truck regulations vary widely by city. Vendors operating across a metro area may face requirements for multiple permits, fees, and regulatory approvals.

Show-Me Institute writers have written about these barriers for years. In 2019, we noted that St. Louis food trucks still faced significant regulatory constraints despite growing demand. Food trucks offer a flexible and relatively low-cost entry into the restaurant business, but local regulations can make that opportunity harder to pursue.

In some places, additional rules beyond health and sanitation standards function as a de facto ban on mobile vendors.

Health and safety regulations would remain under the proposal being considered in Jefferson City. Missouri already regulates food safety through inspections and sanitation standards administered by local health departments.

The real issue is duplication. Requiring vendors who already meet health standards to obtain a license in every municipality adds cost and delay without improving safety.

Every occupational license carries costs: higher prices for consumers, barriers to entry for workers, fewer providers, and lost time and money for licensees. The central policy question is whether those costs are justified by clear benefits to public safety or product quality.

Several Missouri communities have taken steps to loosen food truck restrictions in recent years. Clayton, for example, expanded opportunities for food trucks to operate at events and public gatherings while maintaining basic safety requirements.

Such changes recognize that mobile vendors are part of the broader restaurant ecosystem and often serve as a first step toward larger businesses.

Starting a small business often requires navigating numerous regulatory steps and fees. Reducing unnecessary barriers can make it easier for entrepreneurs to test new ideas and serve customers.

That flexibility helps explain the popularity of food trucks: vendors can move where demand is strongest, serve events, and test new concepts without the overhead of a traditional restaurant.

Major events like the World Cup highlight that advantage. When large numbers of visitors arrive, mobile vendors can help meet the temporary surge in demand for food and entertainment.

But the benefits of reducing unnecessary regulation should not depend on an international sporting event. If getting government out of the way helps vendors serve World Cup visitors in Kansas City, it should also help them serve customers across the rest of Missouri.

The post If Food Truck Reform Is Good for One County, It’s Good for All appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A version of the following commentary appeared in the Columbia Missourian.

Missouri, like many states, mandates that a certain share of electricity come from renewable energy sources. Those sources typically include solar, wind, and biomass—but in many states, including Missouri, they exclude nuclear energy.

A productive debate could be had about whether state government should issue any such mandates. But in the meantime, legislators in Jefferson City have introduced several bills using different approaches, each of which would broaden Missouri’s existing standard to include nuclear energy.

Governor Kehoe discussed the issue in his recent State of the State Address, recognizing the long-standing mismatch between policy and reality.

What Is Missouri’s Current Policy?

Missouri’s current renewable portfolio standard (RPS) mandates that no less than 15 percent of each electric utility’s sales come from generated or purchased renewable energy resources (such as solar, wind, biomass, small hydropower, and other non-nuclear sources certified by the state as a renewable). Many other states have adopted similar standards.

Justifications for RPSs vary. Some view them primarily as a tool to improve air quality or limit greenhouse gases. Others argue that portfolio standards help newer energy technologies compete with established fossil fuels or ensure a diverse and resilient mix of energy sources. In any case, if Missouri is going to have an RPS, nuclear energy should be included.

Is Nuclear Energy Clean?

If Missouri’s RPS exists in order to protect the environment, nuclear energy’s exclusion is unreasonable.

Nuclear energy is a zero (or near-zero) emissions energy source, in terms of both criteria pollutants (those that affect air quality) and greenhouse gases.

Further, to produce the same level of electricity, solar farms need 31 times more land than nuclear plants, while onshore wind farms need 173 times more land. In terms of total direct and indirect land use, nuclear is by far the most efficient.

What About Nuclear Waste?

This concern is common but often misguided. Nuclear energy does produce waste, but the waste is compact, carefully managed, and tightly regulated. Much of what is labeled “waste” still contains usable energy. In fact, only about four percent of nuclear fuel is truly unusable after each use, and the United States could reduce nuclear waste in terms of both volume and radioactivity if the industry recycled used fuel. While existing American nuclear power plants are not well equipped to use spent fuel, new advanced reactor designs are increasingly capable of using it to generate electricity.

Regardless, the presence of safely stored waste should not prevent nuclear energy from being included in an updated portfolio.

Government Interference in the Energy Market

Past arguments have held that subsidies level the playing field for renewable energy. Yet, while solar and wind have expanded rapidly in recent years, only seven nuclear plants have been constructed in the U.S. since 1990. Factors such as regulatory burden have also contributed to nuclear energy’s stagnation, but government interference has played a role. Subsidies, tax-credits, and mandates have actually significantly distorted the market in favor of renewables.

The lion’s share of the more than $80 billion in federal support for renewables came through tax expenditures—driven overwhelmingly by the investment tax credit (ITC) for solar projects, which is claimed when a project begins operation, and the production tax credit (PTC) for wind generation. State RPSs create guaranteed demand for these resources, while federal tax policy lowers the cost of supplying them—effectively a double incentive.

This is not to argue that nuclear energy should be subsidized to a similar degree. However, including nuclear energy in Missouri’s RPS would at least make existing policy more even-handed. Nuclear energy meets growing electricity demand cleanly and reliably. The Missouri Legislature should update the state’s RPS to recognize this fact.

The post Missouri Should Update Its Renewable Portfolio Standard to Include Nuclear Energy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Momentum for early literacy reform continues in Jefferson City, as House Bill (HB) 2872 recently passed out of committee.

While this version removed several provisions from the original bill, it retains the core components necessary to meaningfully improve early reading outcomes. As HB 2872 continues to move through the legislative process, it is critical to preserve two elements.

#1. A Clear, Firm, and Objective Third-Grade Retention Policy

Under HB 2872, a student who scores at the lowest level on a state-approved Missouri reading screener will be retained unless the student completes a summer reading program and scores above the lowest level on a retest opportunity, or qualifies for a good-cause exemption. Good-cause exemptions apply only to students with limited English proficiency, disabilities, or students who have already been retained.

Having a firm third-grade retention policy is important. An analysis of multiple states’ literacy policies found no consistent evidence that reading scores increase in states without a retention component. Critically, the value of the retention component is not just for students who are retained—it is also for all the students who are not retained because their reading scores improve. In most states with retention policies, the retention rate ends up being low; it is the threat of retention, more than retention itself, that spurs widespread literacy gains.

A number of states—Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, Florida, and Tennessee—use a rule-based retention policy. These states have seen significant gains in reading, and all have higher test scores than Missouri.

Without a rule-based policy, teachers and parents talk themselves into promotions that are ultimately to the detriment of children. It feels mean to hold a child back. But it is no kindness to promote a child from the third to fourth grade if the child cannot read. It is not setting the child up for success.

HB 2872 requires that parents be notified if their child is identified as having a reading deficiency at any time during grades 1–3. This level of transparency can help parents be part of the solution for their children.

Retention can be a difficult experience, but research shows it is much easier on young children; it is primarily students in later grades who are negatively impacted when retained. Younger students who are retained under these types of policies benefit tremendously in terms of on-grade academic achievement, even years after retention.

#2. Accountability for Teacher Preparation Programs

It is also critical to align the training in teacher-preparation programs with evidence-based reading instruction. In 2023, the National Council on Teacher Quality evaluated teacher-preparation programs nationwide and awarded nearly half of Missouri’s participating institutions with an “F” for their coverage of scientifically based reading instruction.

HB 2872 allows the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to bring teacher preparation programs into alignment with the science of reading for the benefit of our students. Specifically, it allows DESE to review teacher preparation programs for compliance with evidence-based reading instruction and prohibit noncompliant programs from certifying new teachers.

The new version of HB 2872 that emerged from committee has changed in the following ways. The new bill:

• Has no explicit ban of the use of three-cueing (a reading method relying more on cues, guessing, and memorization rather than systematic phonics) in K-12 classrooms.
• Eliminates the proposed $500 incentive to districts for students who remediate a substantial reading deficiency.
• Redefines the Missouri Reading Screener to include multiple DESE-approved assessments rather than a single (new) statewide test.

These changes weaken the bill, but are secondary to the structural pillars of reform: an objective, assessment-based retention rule and stronger accountability for teacher preparation programs. As long as these pillars are in place (especially retention), HB 2872 represents meaningful progress.

We encourage our Missouri lawmakers to continue to take our literacy crisis seriously and to enact policies that help more Missouri students become confident, capable readers.

The post Early Literacy Reform Advances in the House appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to break down Governor Mike Kehoe’s State of the State address, including what we know so far about his plan to eliminate Missouri’s income tax, proposals to modernize Missouri’s tax system, and the need to rein in state spending. They also discuss open enrollment legislation, the new Missouri Advanced Nuclear Task Force and AI strategy executive order, the push to privatize downtown St. Louis convention center operations, what the Dome’s history says about stadium subsidies, Kansas City’s stadium debate, what they are watching in Jefferson City, and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post 2026 Missouri State of the State | Roundtable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And we will admit, it can make us sound like hand-wringing naysayers, always seeing the glass as half empty. (In our defense, we have each spent two decades trying to successfully launch a combined six children into the world. Saying no is a big part of that. Honestly, we are both fun at parties.)

But isn’t securing population and economic growth a basic function of government?

No, it isn’t. A well-run government should not care about growing either its population or its economy.

According to the ideas of Charles Tiebout, cities (and other local governments) compete with each other for residents based on the services the governments offer and the taxes they impose. Cities that provide quality public services at reasonable tax rates will naturally grow, as more people choose to move into those communities. That increased demand will increase housing prices which, combined with zoning rules, generally prevents the city from growing more than its residents want to. Cities that provide poor services at high taxes will see population decline, for obvious reasons.

The forced need for growth—from a government point of view—only becomes necessary when the books are out of balance. Government leaders often push important financial obligations out into the future—hoping to pay tomorrow for what they purchase today. Those ballooning debts on the horizon make them susceptible to all the journeyman consultants and their economic impact chicanery that only makes the situation worse.

Instead, cities should understand their role is to play host to economic activity, not engage in it themselves. The folks who referee the kids’ soccer games at which I spent many Saturday mornings are not players in the game. Nobody asks them to make calls in a way that helps a particular team or drives up the combined score. Quite the opposite—we are alarmed by the idea that a referee may act on a team preference.

To turn planning and spending over to local elected leaders risks overreach and overspending. Overreach because elected leaders want to be seen as bold visionaries dreaming of “what could be” in order to capture the imagination of voters. Overspending because, well, concern about risk is greatly reduced when the consequences of failure are so widely and thinly spread.

As Heywood Sanders, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said at the Kansas City Library in 2015:

Don’t do what everybody else is doing. Okay? Period. There is an old saying that goes along those lines, “don’t think if you’re doing exactly the same thing that everyone else is doing except not quite as big or good or well, that it’s going to be any different.”

Private actors understand this. Why would they invest in a new convention center for Jefferson City or Springfield if they are just going to be the latest in a long line of cities to do so?  How does that make sense or play to either city’s strengths? It doesn’t—so they turn to elected leaders, who are swayed by the possibilities and unencumbered by the risk of investing their own money. Who cares if it works tomorrow—it feels good today!

If a city is to grow, the best our elected leaders can do is to make sure all the obstacles are removed and the rules are clear and evenly enforced. Everything else, including growth and winners and losers, needs to be determined by the players on the field.

The post What’s a City to Do? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Robert C. Enlow, president and CEO of EdChoice, about the expansion of school choice and the organization’s work advancing parental freedom in education. They discuss Milton Friedman’s original vision, how states like Florida, Arizona, and Indiana have moved toward universal choice, Missouri’s legal fight over its scholarship program, and how parental demand is reshaping education markets, and more.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Ed Choice and Leadership
01:00 Milton Friedman’s Legacy in Education
02:26 The State of School Choice in America
04:57 Challenges in Missouri’s Education System
07:38 The Importance of Universal School Choice
09:39 The Role of Leadership in Education Reform
11:49 Parental Advocacy and the Future of School Choice
14:15 Market Demand and Private School Growth
16:59 The Evolution of Educational Options
19:49 Redefining Quality in Education
22:18 Civic Values and Shared Experiences in Education
26:05 The Debate on Public vs. Private Education
29:47 Legal Challenges and Advocacy for School Choice

Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
So I am actually very excited that you have joined our podcast, Robert Enlow. You are CEO or executive director of EdChoice—which one? President and CEO. How long have you been president and CEO of that organization?

Robert Enlow (00:08)
I’m president and CEO of EdChoice.

Well, that’s a great question, Susan. And thanks for having me, and thanks to Show-Me for all they do. I believe I’ve been president and CEO since 2009, but I joined the organization in 1996. We opened our doors on September 23, 1996, and I was the first guy walking in the door.

Susan Pendergrass (00:31)
And it was originally called the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.

Robert Enlow (00:34)
Correct, the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, obviously established after Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose. During the last decade of their lives, I got to know them—particularly in the last five years of his life. As a young kid coming from England who had these wild-eyed liberal ideas in some ways, it took me a little while for him and Rose to get to understand me and warm up to me, but they did, and it was an amazing experience getting to watch them work.

Susan Pendergrass (00:40)
And you knew them both. What do you think he would think of what’s going on right now in K–12 education?

Robert Enlow (01:04)
You know, I will tell you what he would say to me every single time we passed a bill in another state. He would say, “Robert, we’re on the right track, but you’ve got a lot more to do.” I think he would be happy that we got to universality of people. I think he would be really pleased with the fact that we’re now at a universe of eligibility. I think he’d be less pleased that we’re still controlling the marketplace and controlling the spigot of funds. So I think he would be saying we’re not getting to a true universal marketplace unless you think about supply and information and funding just as much as you think of everyone choosing. Like in a state like Texas, everyone’s excited—oh my God, everyone gets to choose. Well, not really. It’s a billion-dollar appropriation. That means only maybe 90,000 kids get to choose out of 6 million. So when you think about who can really choose, we’ve got to think about the money. And the same thing is true in Missouri with its $50 million—$75 million tax rate and $50 million appropriation still limits the number of fan futures. Yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (02:02)
Like nobody. Tiny, tiny. But we do have an Arizona and a Florida now. I think, you know, I remember a very long time ago working with you on an Arizona voucher that got vetoed by the governor, but now Arizona is essentially universal school choice, and Florida. What I’m seeing most recently that I really love is with their universal school choice and more than half of parents choosing something, the public schools are getting in the game. The public schools are like, okay, spend your scholarship dollars with us, because we’ve been at this a long time. And they’re not seeing it as this us versus them. It’s like, we are all working together to educate our kids. And maybe, you know, we all have a place in this.

Robert Enlow (02:30)
That’s right. So people ask me all the time, Susan, they’re like, well, when will you work with the opponents of school choice, or when will you work with public schools? I’m like, we’ll work with public schools when there truly is a level playing field for all families to be able to choose. Now we actually see there are three aspects to that that we care about, right? All families can choose, right? They can choose all the options, and they can choose with all available dollars. We see five states that have that criteria now: Florida, Arizona, West Virginia, and now New Hampshire. Arkansas—Arkansas. So Arkansas, yeah, Arkansas, Arizona, the A’s; W’s—West Virginia; Florida; and New Hampshire. And what’s really interesting about that, if you look over time—we do this thing called the EdChoice Share, which is what we really care about: how many people are choosing all the options that they want. Florida and Arizona are the top two. And it’s really amazing to see what’s happened in Florida.

Susan Pendergrass (03:16)
Arkansas.

Robert Enlow (03:39)
—people, of families going to traditional assigned public schools. Now, even in that, they are choosing by buying a house, right? So that’s gone from 86.2% in 2001–2002 to now, today, just 51.8%. About half. Isn’t that crazy?

Susan Pendergrass (03:46)
Sure, sure, sure. About half. And I will tell you from my experience in Missouri, that sort of reality—where almost every kid just goes to their assigned public school, whatever’s on the utility bill, that’s where you go to school and you have no other options—is still assumed to be almost universal. In fact, it is in Missouri, because we only have charter schools as punishment. We have that tiny little scholarship program. You can go to a full-time virtual, which isn’t for everyone. So essentially, you see the address on the utility bill is where you go to school. And I just think that it’s been really hard to sort of break through that mindset and let folks know, like in Florida, only half of parents are doing that. And probably, like you said, a sizable percentage of that half decided where to live based on what school their kids would go to. So they are, in a sense, exercising some choice. And I just wonder, when you have two states in the same nation that are so completely divergent, where does that lead us to? So Missouri’s kind of surrounded.

Robert Enlow (04:57)
Well, it’s—yeah, so Missouri is surrounded, and where it leads you to is a couple of things. It leads you to a metric of in-migration. In Indiana, one of the things I get asked a lot is, you know, what’s the success metric for your state? And I say the number of people migrating to our state because they have educational options. Right. So we are a state of educational options on your border, almost, and everyone can choose. Right. And it’s a big deal, and it’s why we’ve had more and more families. You’re ranked in our study 28th out of 51. And you really have not seen a change. Well, I mean, you still have 80.3% in traditional schools, but what you’ve done is you’ve allowed magnet schools to grow and you’ve had some charter school—your charter school growth has been—let’s take a look. You’ve actually had a decent—

Susan Pendergrass (05:32)
That seems high, to be honest. Yeah, but I can tell you our charter schools are punishments. They’re only in Kansas City and St. Louis, only in non-accredited districts. So right now there might be a charter school in the works in a fully accredited district—in Columbia 93—and people in Columbia 93 are freaking out about a charter school opening. This is how sort of, like, behind the curve we are. They’re freaking out that a charter school might open, and they’re arguing we don’t need it. And I will say—I want to get to the lawsuit against our scholarship program. We have a very strong, what I sort of call the—

Robert Enlow (05:52)
Yeah, that’s great.

Susan Pendergrass (06:16)
—educational establishment in Jefferson City. That is the teacher union leadership, the Association of School Boards, and the Association of Superintendents. Because we have 520 districts, there’s a lot of superintendents and a lot of school boards, and they will show up to a hearing to make sure that parents don’t get to choose where their kids go to school.

Robert Enlow (06:35)
Yeah, so this is one of the reasons why, in 2016, when the Milton Friedman Foundation changed its name to EdChoice, we focused on universality. Because I think we realized that the fights for school choice—where they’re fighting to make sure that children can escape from bad schools—is the wrong message. The message is that all families need to have some freedom to choose what works best for them. And that should be across all income levels. Why are we okay with giving billionaires access to gated, segregated public schools, but freak out when we give them the options to choose private schools? Moreover, you can’t continue to ask Republican legislators to vote for something that they’re going to get killed for in their district. Right. And so one of the key points of universality has been being able to say, we need you to support choice so that constituents of yours can get an opportunity. So in your state, one of the challenges has been: how do we get eligibility to where it’s supposed to be universal? And you’ve done your—yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (07:38)
Funding, funding. I mean, we had tiny funding up until this $50 million. The only scholarship dollars we had were fundraised from individual and corporate donors. So getting that money together has been a real challenge, and I think we got to $15 to $20 million finally. And ironically—I don’t know, you may not know this because it’s very in the weeds—but when that ESA program, when that scholarship program passed, we agreed—the legislature agreed—that any district that lost a student to the scholarship program could continue to count them for five years. So this year they’re asking for $30 million to cover the kids who took the scholarship. Thirty million dollars is going to go to public schools for the kids who took the scholarships, but they don’t want the scholarship program to get $50 million. And I just think the irony kills me.

Robert Enlow (08:25)
Well, hold on—just, I think—so this hold-harmless thing, let me just ask a question. I think Show-Me then should put in a bill like this: if they want to be held harmless when a student leaves, then anytime a child moves from one public school to another public school, they should hold that other public school to account. Public schools are getting—they’re the ones where families are moving the most, right? So aren’t other public schools in Missouri taking more money from other public schools than any kind of choice or charter program?

Susan Pendergrass (08:42)
That’s right. Yeah, and God forbid that we’re sending kids to Indiana for your in-migration, right? Like, when kids leave, somehow we should—and we do have these crazy hold-harmless policies that you guys have analyzed—but I feel like it’s starting to feel like we have sort of two different worlds. If you raise your kids in Florida or Arizona or Arkansas, when they get to be four or five years old, then good news: you get to sit down and look at your options and look at your kid and look at where you work, what might fit your schedule, and you can pick from a number of things. If you live in Missouri, you cannot. And I just think that’s gonna start to diverge.

Robert Enlow (09:25)
So here’s what I’m going to say about that. I agree with you. And there is a divergence happening, particularly in the states in America that have broad choices—and I don’t just mean private school; I mean charter and all of that. But once you get a taste of choice—we have really believed this over time—once you start to get a taste of choice, and if you make it broad enough and open enough, parents begin to start utilizing that option; they learn over time. And so it didn’t happen overnight that Florida went from 90% to 51%. It happened over 20 years as choice grew and became more eligible. So, you know, key point is you in Missouri now have a program. It now has some public funds attached to it. And the goal is to get that utilized as much and as broadly as possible in every district. I say this all the time: one of the reasons why Indiana’s Choice Program is so defensible is—we love our charter schools—but charter schools, I think, are in 30 districts and 30 legislative districts. Private schools are in every single legislative district in the state, and all of them take choice dollars. And so you have a built-in constituency of support. We now have 110,000 families using choice out of our million kids. And so it’s amazing, the growth. It didn’t start off that way. It started off with 3,500. Right. And so you see the growth of choice over time. And as long as your legislatures are willing to move forward, then you’re going to continue to see that change. And no amount of union hacking and no amount of school board association—because they’re ultimately disconnected with what the parents want. And that’s particularly true after COVID, because there’s a ton of micro schools and a ton of—Milton Friedman used to say, you know you’re ready for a free market when there’s the presence of an underground market. And there’s a huge underground market for education happening all over Missouri right now in the form of micro schools and pods. Parents are wanting to move. And as the legislature starts giving them access to public funds, you’ll see growth over time.

Susan Pendergrass (11:22)
And we’ve got some parent advocacy groups that have appeared on the scene, like Activate Missouri. And I know, like in Florida, there were some very loud parent groups that influenced elections because they wanted school choice. And I do believe that parents are going to be the ones that sort of drive the change in Missouri. But you guys in Indiana also had very strong leadership. You had Governor Mitch Daniels—like, you had very strong leadership. We’ve had a bit of a vacuum in that regard in Missouri. Our new governor supports the idea of school choice. I’m not sure that he’s willing to put his political capital on the line for it in the way that you guys—

Robert Enlow (11:57)
Yeah, so there’s a lot of feeling out there now—oh my God, if I get a governor, it’ll be a savior, right? And look, governors are super important and they are critical for getting it over the line. Mitch Daniels was critical to take this movement in the country to the next step. Prior to Mitch Daniels, we’d sort of seen the failure of a voucher program in Florida—Jeb Bush’s voucher program—and so we’d gone to this tax-credit scholarship model, right? And Mitch said, no, we’re going to do something big, statewide and large. And when he did that, he sort of opened the floodgates for a bunch of states. So that was really important. Governor Pence was supportive. But the governors after that haven’t been, like, massively out in front driving stuff. They’ve not not signed it when it comes to their table, but they haven’t been out there leading the way. Having a Speaker of the House like Representative Todd Huston—by the way, it’s amazing. So having leadership roles is critically important. I can’t say enough for someone like Speaker Huston. So, you know, it’s important to have a governor, but it’s super important to have leadership in the House and Senate.

Susan Pendergrass (13:05)
Yeah, you must, because I know you have the third-grade non-retention for kids who are behind in reading. I know that you guys are out in front on the—really the first really meaty—federal waiver request that the Secretary of Education has been asking for states to send in their waiver requests. And Indiana’s is certainly the most robust. You’re going back to letter grades for your schools. I mean, you’re not just doing choice. You guys are seemingly moving on a lot of fronts in education in a way that will make it very attractive to families. And I try to make this point all the time in Missouri: families are gonna leave and businesses are gonna leave because we have all of these second-generation choosers, right? So kids who chose their school are having kids, and they expect to choose their school.

Robert Enlow (13:47)
Look, the idea of customer choice is embedded into anyone who’s under 30, right? And so when they begin to realize that’s going to be true in education, they’re going to be like, why am I getting this one-size-fits-all system that doesn’t actually fit either my values or my safety or what I think of academic quality—or what if I want something more hybrid? I mean, the reality is that families under 30 now—they’re not having kids; we have a baby bust here—but those under 30 are definitely saying, “I want more choice and customization.”

Susan Pendergrass (14:15)
Yeah, and as you know, you have multiple kids, I have multiple kids—they’re not even all the same. So what works for one might not work for all of them within a family. Now, another argument that we get in Missouri, in terms of the need for private school choice, is we don’t have enough—you know, we don’t have very many private schools, and most rural districts don’t have any. And we are seeing some research emerge that the private school market responds in these scholarship programs, right?

Robert Enlow (14:38)
I love hearing this, Susan, and I’m sorry if I am frustrated by that question. I don’t think you ever, ever ask—no one in the world ever asked—and I know this is not comparing education with this product—but no one in the world ever asked Lay’s Potato Chips how many bags of Fritos they need. They figure that out based on customer and market demand. This idea that somehow private schools don’t exist—of course they exist to market demand.

Susan Pendergrass (14:45)
Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah.

Robert Enlow (15:06)
When it comes and when it’s free and when it’s open. Let me give you an example. In Indiana, when we first started our program in 2010, it was like, “There’s not enough private school spaces. There’s not enough private school spaces.” Okay, so we did a survey of all the private schools. We got all the private schools to get together on how many spaces they had. They had 22,000 available spaces. We went through district and grade. Great. And then when we expanded it in 2013, the governor says, “We need to know how many spaces there are going to be.” All right, we’ll do another survey—since no one believes that markets respond, right? Well, we did a whole other survey. How many spaces do you think there were? Twenty-two thousand. Exactly. My point is—like 20 or 22,000, right? This concept of “Oh, we don’t know if there’s enough supply.” Look, markets will respond so long as markets are free to respond. So one of the biggest challenges right now going forward is—look, try to—

Susan Pendergrass (15:41)
I don’t—

Robert Enlow (16:01)
School choice—or private school choice, or educational choice—can do one of three things: fill seats in existing schools, build new seats in existing schools, or build new schools, right? Now, the way we’ve run private schooling in America is we’re only doing one and two. We’re filling seats in existing. And just remember, private schools in the last 25 years lost 10% market share total, right? So there’s a ton of spaces. There’s a ton of spaces in private schools all over America, right? So if you think you lost 10% of—

Susan Pendergrass (16:20)
That’s right. Closed. A lot of schools closed. Ahem.

Robert Enlow (16:30)
—five million, right? Or whatever the number is. You have plenty of spaces out there in private currently. Now we need to grow those spaces and grow the different types of models. That’s going to require legislators to be a bit more willing to take some risk around the types of schools that they allow to be, quote-unquote, “accredited,” right? So you need to allow micro schools. You need to allow new entrants into the marketplace. And the more you do that, the faster it will grow. But there are slots out there. And what we’re really finding from the emerging research is that private schools are growing faster in rural areas—like in Florida—and they’re actually growing. I mean, Susan, you did this research for us about Florida and Arizona, so why don’t you tell us how fast they’re growing?

Susan Pendergrass (17:07)
Right. Well, they’re growing in Arizona. What I will say that comes out of that research is parents don’t really care what the label is on the bill. They are calling a lot of things “schools” now, right, that you might not have called schools before. And you guys survey parents—you do your monthly surveys. Schooling in America—what’s it called? What’s your monthly survey? Yeah. You’ve been doing it since COVID.

Robert Enlow (17:27)
It’s called Morning Consult—sorry, Schooling in America polling.

Susan Pendergrass (17:32)
And what I think is one of the most interesting findings is that consistently, now that COVID’s way in the rearview, parents want their kids to go to school two or three days a week. More parents want their kids home a couple days and in school a couple days than want five days in school or five days at home. People sort of want this—they like this sort of flexibility thing. And what I think we’re seeing is a growth in, like you said, micro schools, hybrid schools, homeschool co-ops where I am homeschooling a couple days, then a couple days my child is going somewhere to be part of group activities. And parents are doing online coding schools, and that’s a school to them, right? It’s an online situation where their kids are learning to code, and they’re calling it a school. So, yeah, the definition of what is a private school—the fact that it’s not a nonprofit provider, that it’s a private provider and they’re providing all sorts of different things—is really getting blurry. I think that that is a definite finding. And where that’s allowed to thrive, like Arizona, where you have this massive ESA program, and Florida—that’s where you’re seeing parents are only limited by what they can think up, right?

Robert Enlow (18:39)
So how much growth was there in Arizona and Florida? You saw it. Tell me how much there was.

Susan Pendergrass (18:44)
In the number of private schools? Well, I will say this: private school data is messy. And in most states, it looks like they’re declining. Florida and Arizona are two of the states where you can say for sure—outside the error ranges—they have more private schools now than they did 10 years ago. And that is the exception to the rest of the country. You can say for sure California and New York have fewer private schools than they did 10 years ago.

Robert Enlow (18:45)
Yeah. I love you, Reese Richard.

Susan Pendergrass (19:08)
And the nation as a whole has fewer private schools. But in Florida and Arizona, you’re seeing the opposite direction—and Ohio. So the market is responding, but it might not be, you know, a full-on brick-and-mortar cafeteria-gym-library private school. It might be something that doesn’t look exactly like that. And to a parent, it’s a school. And that’s what I think we’re seeing. And I know that in Florida, parents are combining scholarship programs to have their child see a paraprofessional and get some specialized equipment if they have a disability, and be part of a group activity. And I think that is one of the most exciting things that’s happening—these really interesting, expansive, curated experiences that parents are putting together.

Robert Enlow (19:49)
Yeah, you saw in one year a growth of 150—think—private schools or private options in Arizona in just one year. So it’s not like the market won’t respond.

Susan Pendergrass (19:56)
Yeah. And more of them are accessing online schools than they used to. Right—Stanford has a school, BYU has a school. If you can access these online schools, they don’t have to be in-state. That’s because the parents are deciding where the money goes. But in Missouri, Missouri has accredited Missouri virtual schools, and that’s where you have to enroll your child. But when you let the parents and word of mouth—say, you know, “Hey, I’ve got a great foreign language school”—word of mouth works. Then I think you definitely see a massive expansion of what parents are accessing through these programs. And I can only imagine, based on Milton Friedman’s—what, 1955? 57? 55—premise on this, that achievement should go up. I mean, I know that this isn’t the thing that we are focused on, but it should.

Robert Enlow (20:36)
Yep, 1955.

Susan Pendergrass (20:46)
I’ve always said, like, if 25% of Missouri eighth graders are proficient in math, I don’t think 75% of Missouri parents, if they were given control over it, would just accept the fact that their kid didn’t learn math.

Robert Enlow (20:56)
So one of the challenges I think we have with that is: what do we determine to be quality, and how do we measure that, right? I’m one of the few that think that the standards movements of the 1980s did more harm to K–12 education than good.

Susan Pendergrass (21:02)
Yeah, that’s a big question. Tell me why.

Robert Enlow (21:14)
Because I think the standardization to such a point—which then meant you had to have state tests aligned to that standardization, which then meant you had to create very rigid scope and sequencing for teachers—it really did, in a way, de-professionalize the teaching industry and make it a widget industry. And so, as a result, I think we’ve lost this ability to educate, and we’ve created this desire to—

Susan Pendergrass (21:17)
—teach to it.

Robert Enlow (21:43)
—to inculcate in terms of how to get them to do a test. I’m not a big fan of state tests. I think they get gamed all the time and changed all the time. I’m not a huge fan of state standards. I think you can have standards, but align them to something else. We had the Iowa Test of Basic Skills growing up, and that was a fine test, and we could do the same. So we, for example, are believers in testing choice and think we should allow families to do that. So when you look at quality—

Susan Pendergrass (22:10)
You mean pick a test—allow them to pick a test? And how would you hold any schools accountable, or would you? Would you do the Ashley Berner or the British approach? What would you do?

Robert Enlow (22:13)
Yeah, they should all be taking tests if they want. I think—no, look, first of all, I think parents hold schools accountable. We’re learning that from Arizona, right? By the time they close a charter school in Arizona, there’s like 12 parents in it, right? So, I mean, parents know quality. But you’ve got to remember, parents are choosing for different reasons. I think about this all the time. I had a son who had special needs, and I didn’t want to send him to the local public school because it was going to be bad for him, in my opinion. He wasn’t going to be served. So I went and did a whole bunch of searching around, and I picked a school that was 15th on the I-STEP for third-grade results—that was Indiana—versus the other school that was seventh, right? Why did I do that? Well, I did it because I thought he’d have a safer environment, he’d have a more moral environment—an environment with my values—and it was cheap enough for me, and it was good enough. So, parents make decisions based on a whole host of factors, and I think it’s silly for us to think that they don’t. The other thing is: what do we mean by quality is a big deal. I am not a fan of saying quality is only a test score. I think quality is much more than that. I don’t know about your kids, Susan.

Susan Pendergrass (23:18)
That’s a great question. But do test scores matter?

Robert Enlow (23:43)
I’m not sure I’d say—they matter insofar as you inform parents how kids are doing relative to others. I think it’s important that families know that. I’m a big fan of the one thing I do like about the British system—just ranking all the schools. That’s what they do: they take a test and everyone gets put on a league table. I love that concept. Everyone gets on a league table, and you can say, “Oh, you’re going to a school that’s 100 out of 200. Well, you’re mid-table. Why aren’t you going to a school that’s 85 or 60,” or something like that? So I think it’s really important to just put it on a table, because I think keeping up with the Joneses is actually a valuable part of society. But think about—

Susan Pendergrass (24:01)
We do that at the Show-Me Institute. For Missouri schools, we do rank all the schools. But one more question—just to push back on that a little bit, but not exactly that. One thing that we’re seeing, or that I’ve seen in these scholarship programs, is that kids are potentially—we’re growing the number of kids who are not having shared experiences with their peers. And by that, I mean probably going to have a lot fewer kids playing the trumpet or playing the cello.

Robert Enlow (24:10)
No.

Susan Pendergrass (24:28)
Because when you go to middle school and you say, “I’m going to take band,” and then they’re like, “Let’s pick an instrument,” right? That is kind of hokey, but that was what a lot of us did. And now you have parents who are simply having their child go to guitar lessons or piano lessons because that’s what their kid wants to play. And you’re not going to have kids hauling their flute home on the bus. And that’s kind of a shared experience. Also, things like the weird PE classes I had to take, like square dancing or, I don’t know, bowling. You know, we’re going to lose some of that from a civic point of view. We’re going to lose lots of the shared experience, and kids are going to have these algorithm-driven or curated experiences. What do you think?

Robert Enlow (25:06)
Okay, comrade. Let me just say, okay, comrade. I can’t believe I just heard an apologist for school buses, right? I mean, everyone get on a bus with a snotty—listen, common cultural experiences happen by common cultural things, not by being in the same place at the same time. This idea that schools are the locus of all of our common cultural experiences is part of the problem we have in education. So in Arizona—

Susan Pendergrass (25:08)
Come on, come on, what do you think? You have to ride the school bus?

Robert Enlow (25:35)
Yeah. Yes, yes. There are tons and tons of common cultural experiences right now. The fastest-growing type of tutor is music and physical instruction, right? Are they not taking classes together? Are they not working together with other kids? They’re just not working with other kids in a common—in a socialist—environment of a school bus or in a school, right? This idea that acculturation and socialization happen only inside of a K–12 school building strikes me as very socialistic.

Susan Pendergrass (26:05)
I hear it. I hear it a lot from the—air quotes—other side. I hear that they are the great equalizing institution: traditional K–12 public schools.

Robert Enlow (26:13)
Okay, if that were the case—if that were the case—why is the data extremely clear in voucher programs and choice programs that the civic values of kids in choice programs who attend private schools are far greater than the civic values and virtues of those who attend traditional public schools? I say this all the time: if you go to the GLSEN survey—the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network survey of kids and their issues in dealing with being gay—Which school system is the worst on gay kids? They get dead. Based on the data that they bring out, public schools have significantly higher rates of abuse of gay kids. Right? How tolerant is that? Now, what ends up happening is they hear about it more in religious schools—they hear about being gay—but they’re not bullied. So you actually ask yourself this question: Do you want your gay kid bullied, or do you want them to hear about it more?

Susan Pendergrass (26:42)
I’m guessing you’re going to say traditional public schools.

Robert Enlow (27:06)
These are legitimate questions to ask. And by the way, we’re not doing well with this at all in any school system. But this idea of civic virtue coming from a homogenized institution strikes me as naive at best—particularly since, if you think those schools don’t teach values, you’re wrong. They absolutely teach values. And then they teach values based on their school assignment, which is based on where they live. And if you don’t think neighborhoods produce value and values, then you’re wrong. Anyone who knows me knows that I rail against suburbia all the time—it’s just part of who I am. Gated, segregated communities really bother me. It bothers me. These ideas of living in enclaves piss me off, because I don’t think that’s what America is supposed to be about. But that ends up what’s happening in schooling, right? And what private schooling and choice does is it breaks that apart. How are you getting more civic tolerance—how are you getting more integration—in private schooling than you are in public schools? Whenever I hear, “Public schools are the center and locus of our community shared experience,” I actually cringe and start worrying about what they’re teaching.

Susan Pendergrass (28:13)
Yeah, I also saw a comment the other day on a Signal chat I’m on that charter schools are part of the right-wing conservative agenda to kill public education, which just makes me crazy, because charter schools by and large serve poor kids of color, and there’s nothing to do with the—there’s no right-wing conservative agenda there. And I know a lot of parents who would very much disagree with that. But that is the perception that’s out there—that you guys, with your school choice and your vouchers—and I know that you guys did a whole market test on the word “voucher,” which I think is brilliant, because no matter what the program is, folks on the left call it a voucher scheme. There’s a “scheme,” and that it’s killing public education, and then we won’t have a civic-minded, you know, equal electorate, basically.

Robert Enlow (28:39)
Yep. Can we start to redefine—and I have to redefine—look, I am a huge believer in public education. I want an educated public. I want kids to be educated. I want those—because I think society is benefited. That is a very different thing from running a system of common schools that was built off the backs of a potentially bigoted idea in the 1840s, right? I think there’s a different conversation. I think government-run, district-run schools, while a reality, are different than public education. Kids are educated to the public interest if they go to a school or learning environment where they get educated. And so that’s why Milton Friedman’s original idea—separate the public financing of education from the government running a school.

Susan Pendergrass (29:47)
Well, it’s a brilliant idea, and I appreciate you coming to argue with me about it. That’s great. I could go on, but I’m going to let it go at that. I appreciate that you guys—I didn’t really get into it—but that you’re an intervenor in the Missouri case. Clearly you believe that more Missouri families should have access to this. The parents who are the defendants basically have a sibling that they would like to join the program that one of their kids is in. And I suspect that—

Robert Enlow (29:51)
I love arguing with you. You’re one of my dearest, oldest friends. There’s very few people like you, right?

Susan Pendergrass (30:17)
I think we’re going to be successful. We had one successful ruling so far where the program gets to continue.

Robert Enlow (30:22)
Yeah, we’re the intervenors. Choice Legal Advocates is the intervenor in Missouri National Education Association et al. versus State of Missouri. So we are intervening on behalf of parents. Currently, the district court denied a temporary injunction, so they allowed the program to continue. We’re excited by that. We’re strongly positive that we think it’s a good sign for us and that we should end up on the right side of this. You know, I’m just shocked that the unions continue to be on the wrong side of parents all the time.

Susan Pendergrass (30:49)
They sure do. All right. Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate you taking the time to join us on the podcast.

Robert Enlow (30:54)
Thanks for having me, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post From Milton Friedman to Modern School Choice with Robert Enlow appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

David Stokes, Elias Tsapelas, and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss local ballot measures in Missouri, including new hotel taxes in Springfield and Jefferson City, municipal use and gas taxes, how the ongoing federal shutdown could jeopardize food stamp benefits for hundreds of thousands of Missourians and what the federal Rural Health Transformation Fund means for reform, and emerging ideas in energy policy such as consumer regulated electricity and the debate over data center development in Missouri.

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts 

Listen on SoundCloud

Timestamps

00:00 Election Season Insights
04:57 Convention Center Controversies
09:09 Understanding Use Taxes
13:32 State Budget and SNAP Challenges
16:12 Rural Health Transformation Fund
21:59 Energy Prices and Consumer Regulation
27:21 Data Centers: Economic Growth vs. Local Concerns

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Election Day Preview, SNAP Shortfalls, and Missouri’s Data Center Debate | Roundtable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Created, at least in part, to help states deal with the reining in of Medicaid provider taxes, the fund guarantees each state $500 million (half of the $50 billion divided by 50 states), but the other half ($25 billion) is going to be awarded based on a scoring system the federal government recently rolled out. Most notable among the recently published scoring criteria are points for enacting many of the free-market healthcare reforms my colleagues and I have been writing about for years.

The scoring system doesn’t just assess demographics or the number of rural hospitals, though they are a big part of the rubric. It also awards states points for policy changes that reduce red tape and open the door for better care. Some of these items include repealing certificate of need (CON) laws, expanding scope of practice for nurses and other healthcare professionals, improving short-term health insurance options, and making telehealth more accessible. Missouri has debated each of these ideas for years, and made some progress, but now enacting these meaningful reforms has additional monetary stakes.

Despite recent incremental progress on the free-market healthcare front, there’s still a lot that Missouri could do. Our CON laws are some of the worst in the country. They stifle healthcare competition by forcing providers to receive permission, often from their competitors, before adding new hospital beds, building new facilities, or even purchasing certain types of equipment.

Scope of practice restrictions are another self-inflicted wound I’ve written a lot about in the past. Missouri gives advanced practice registered nurses less autonomy than in many other states. Our state already has a shortage of healthcare providers, and removing those restrictions would help improve healthcare access, make Missouri jobs more competitive, and ultimately lower costs—all without sacrificing patient safety.

On the telemedicine front, Missouri has made progress by expanding services to audio-only technologies earlier this year but has the potential to go much further. More flexible rules on prescribing and treating patients could dramatically expand access for families, especially for those in rural communities.

At the end of the day, many of the reforms incentivized by the OBBB are policies Missouri should have adopted years ago, but the federal funding offers lawmakers a new reason to finally take action. If Jefferson City seizes this golden opportunity, Missouri can both improve the state’s healthcare policy and score some additional resources that could help in these tough budgetary times. That sounds like a rare win-win to me.

The post Reform First, Dollars Second appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On November 4, Jefferson City voters will decide on a proposal to renew the city’s seven percent hotel tax. The proceeds from the tax will help fund a new conference center for the city. Supporters of the new conference center have claimed it will create 370 new jobs and generate over $100 million in economic growth. Exaggerated estimates such as this one have been made on behalf of convention and conference center projects all around the country for decades, and the historic evidence is clear that Jefferson City voters should be dubious of such claims.

Between now and November, Jefferson City residents who visit St. Louis should drive by the largely empty dome attached to St. Louis’s downtown conference center to see how these conference center promises often play out. That dome was a part of a large convention center expansion in the 1990s. The same promises of growth, revenue, and utopia were all made when St. Louis voters approved a hotel tax increase back then. Now the dome is mostly empty, and the regional body that manages it is struggling to pay for its upkeep. You can also visit the site of the taxpayer-subsidized convention center hotel that went along with the project. You can only visit the site of the hotel, not the hotel itself, because the hotel failed and was foreclosed on long ago.

Like a Cold War general in a Kubrick movie or a carpenter with a box full of nails, local tourism agencies have the same solution for every problem. Economic recession? Expand the convention center. Economic growth? Enlarge the convention center. Global nuclear war? Definitely gonna need a bigger convention center to commiserate in.

The renewed hotel tax isn’t the only public money being used as part of this plan. State tax dollars are being pursued in the legislature, and the conference center may receive local tax subsidies.

Supporters of the conference center plan in Jefferson City would likely say their plan is not as grandiose as a major convention center and dome project in St. Louis, and they are correct in that regard. However, there are plenty of examples of more comparable projects that have failed to reach the level of activity anywhere near was promised. Haywood Sanders is a researcher and writer with the University of Texas–San Antonio who has studied convention center expansions for decades. He has documented how cities and tourism agencies systematically inflate projections to get these projects approved. Sanders has cited the actual and underwhelming numbers of very comparable projects in Overland Park, Kansas, and St. Charles, Missouri. Overland Park opened its convention center and hotel in 2002. Project supporters had projected $36 million in annual hotel revenue by 2012, but the reality was much lower, coming in at under $20 million.

Sanders explains that the convention and conference-center industry peaked in the early 2000s and shows no signs of returning to the success it had back then. With a major convention area nearby in Lake of the Ozarks, a new center in Jefferson City will face intense competition for these limited conference opportunities.

Taxpayers should not be on the hook for conference centers whose overstated benefits, small as they will be, will largely go to private entities. Jefferson City is the capital of the Show-Me State, and the claims being made by convention-center supporters should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism by voters.

The post Jefferson City Residents Should Be Skeptical of Conference Center Project appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Of Missouri’s four largest cities—Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and Columbia—Springfield will soon be the only one without charter schools. Charter schools are already thriving in Kansas City, and St. Louis and thanks to recent legislation Columbia will have its first charter schools up and running as early as 2026.

Springfield is missing out.

Charter schools are public schools that are exempt from some of the rules and regulations that apply to traditional public schools. In most Missouri counties, including Greene County, charter schools are not allowed to operate unless they are sponsored by the local school board—a requirement that effectively bans them. Senate Bill 727, signed into law in 2024, changed this requirement in Boone County, where Columbia is located. We need similar legislation in Greene County.

Why? There are several reasons—including that charter schools are popular with families—but the most important reason is that charter schools are more effective than traditional public schools. Academic studies consistently show students who attend charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools on state exams and are more likely to attend college. In some cases, the performance differences are substantial. A recent national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that charter schools deliver additional academic growth equivalent to 6 extra days of instruction in math each year, and 16 extra days in reading, compared to traditional public schools. This same study shows that Missouri has some of the most effective charter schools in the country.

Charter school impacts are largest in areas where the local neighborhood schools are underperforming. Does Springfield have any low-performing neighborhood schools? Unfortunately, it sure does. At Westport Elementary School in 2024, only 24 percent of 5th-graders scored proficient or higher on the state English Language Arts test, and in math the number was just 14 percent. At Parkview High School, only 16 percent of students who took the Algebra I end-of-course exam scored proficient or above.

Now imagine your child is zoned for one of these schools and unless you move—perhaps not in your budget—this is where he or she will be required to attend. Charter schools give families in this situation new hope. Many charter operators intentionally open schools in neighborhoods where the traditional public schools are the worst—their mission is to provide educational opportunities in these communities that are not otherwise available. In many cities, the top charter schools have long waitlists.

If we want more Springfield children to have access to highly effective schools, permitting charter schools to operate in Greene County is one of the simplest ways to do it.

How can we make this happen? Following Boone County’s playbook, we need a champion for charter schools in the state legislature who will prioritize this issue in the upcoming legislative session. For Boone County, that champion was Caleb Rowden, a longtime charter advocate. Education legislation in Jefferson City is increasingly “omnibus” style, which means multiple different education policies are bundled into one bill. Rowden made sure that permitting charter schools to operate in Boone County, without the requirement that they be sponsored by the local school board, was part of the 2024 omnibus bill.

Will someone step up in a similar manner for Greene County? I sure hope so.

Charter schools are public schools, their students are public school students, and their teachers are public school teachers. They cannot charge tuition, they’re secular, and they’re open to all students (they must admit students by lottery if the number of applicants is greater than the number of available spots). We know charter schools work and that they’re popular with families.

Every year that passes without charter schools operating in Greene County is a missed opportunity for Springfield’s children.

The post Springfield Needs Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For several years now, my colleagues and I have been writing about the benefits of price transparency in healthcare, and the fierce opposition the idea has faced in Jefferson City. Naively, I assumed that informing patients of the cost of healthcare services before they were provided would be uncontroversial. After all, what other expensive goods or services do consumers purchase without knowing what they’ll pay beforehand? But after several price transparency bills received hearings last year the points of contention became a little clearer.

During public testimony on House Bill (HB) 1837 last year, the Missouri Hospital Association stated that complying with the bill’s price transparency requirements would be financially burdensome. This was confusing because HB 1837 simply added state-imposed penalties if hospitals didn’t comply with federal transparency requirements that are already on the books. As I’ve written previously, back in 2019, the Trump administration issued an executive order requiring hospitals to publish a list of standard charges for 300 common procedures in a user-friendly, shoppable display. This was a requirement that has since been extended to health plans and was kept in place throughout the entire Biden administration.

But as I’ve also explained at length, Missouri hospitals have been reluctant to comply (at least in spirit) with the federal requirements. In the years since, state legislators across the country have begun filing bills to encourage greater compliance. At first, the Missouri bills languished in committee without receiving public hearings. Then, last year, bills received hearings in both chambers of the legislature and were even voted out of committee. Unfortunately, this year, the subject didn’t receive a hearing in the House and wasn’t successfully voted out of committee in the Senate.

It’s hard to know what changed since last year that led to the policy losing support among Missouri’s legislators, but I think it’s safe to assume that hospitals still oppose the effort. Going into next year’s session, I’ll continue highlighting the benefits of price transparency and the importance of policymakers taking action to help rein in skyrocketing healthcare costs. While it may be true that price transparency isn’t a silver bullet for all that ails America’s broken healthcare system, it’s a step in the right direction that shouldn’t be delayed because certain providers claim they can’t afford it. Missouri patients can’t afford the wait.

The post A Step Backward for Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That truce, however tenuous, is now over. And the legislative safeguards that underpinned it? Those are collapsing too. Missouri’s border war limitations on cross-state tax subsidies are set to expire in August. Earlier this year, legislation was introduced to preserve the truce by eliminating the expiration date entirely. Lawmakers added it to Senate Bill 10, which passed both chambers independently—but couldn’t get reconciled before session’s end. So the bill died, and with it, hopes for ending the economic arms race.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly indicated last year she was never really serious about the truce. But now Missouri has let the truce expire. And in doing so, our lawmakers joined Kansas in an economic race to the bottom. It’s bad policy. Worse, it’s profoundly unserious governance.

Economic development isn’t war. It’s not supposed to be a battlefield where neighboring states trade artillery in the form of publicly issued bonds and tax abatements. Yet here we are again, watching legislators in Jefferson City and Topeka dress up like Civil War reenactors—reenacting the Border War with new costumes and worse math.

Meanwhile, Missouri public officials continue their own subsidy spree, throwing tax breaks at data centers and entertainment districts while the state is unable to keep the streets repaired or safe. If lawmakers were serious about our state’s economic health, they’d rein in their own giveaways first.

Instead, we’re back to playing an expensive, performative game—one that enriches developers, flatters politicians, and drains public coffers. Legislators in both states want to be seen as “fighting” for jobs, but all they’re doing is trading fire in border skirmishes that make the region poorer.

The original truce was imperfect, but it pointed in the right direction. It said we could grow the region without cannibalizing each other. That we didn’t have to subsidize the illusion of progress. That good policy could also be good politics.

By breaking the truce or letting it expire, politicians on both sides demonstrated they are not interested in sober economic stewardship. They may win a few headlines or ribbon cuttings. But the public—taxpayers, students, local governments—will be left paying the bill.

If this is a reenactment, let’s at least admit it: The weapons are new, but the economic costs are the same.

The post Border War is Back On! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If we believe it’s essential for schools to teach core academic skills—like reading and math—then we should support the tools that help us measure those skills. Statewide standardized tests remain our best tool for understanding how much students are learning. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets counted.

However, there is growing opposition to state testing in Missouri on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, the education establishment has long resisted all forms of accountability, and what better way to shut down accountability than to stop measuring how students perform in school? The left has been surprisingly effective in undermining the credibility of state tests, leading many to believe they don’t measure what matters. Standardized tests have been criticized for being too narrow, unobjective, and even racist. (I wish I were exaggerating on the last point, but I am not.) At the university level, we saw a brief movement to eliminate SAT and ACT requirements—only to see many institutions walk those changes back once they realized these tests provide crucial insight into academic readiness.

Meanwhile, on the right, the opposition to testing is relatively new. Not long ago, political conservatives were strong advocates for test-based accountability. No Child Left Behind, the largest test-based accountability policy in U.S. history, was ushered in under George W. Bush in the early 2000s. But today, it seems that testing has been swept up in a general push to shrink government and localize decision-making. In Missouri, testing is viewed as part of the state’s top-down policy agenda and a threat to local control.

This left-right alliance is playing out now in Jefferson City. Senate Bill 360, which would dismantle uniform statewide testing and accountability in Missouri, is sponsored by Republican Senator Jill Carter and supported by the National Education Association, a group typically aligned with the left.

All of this is unfortunate, because the truth is we need state standardized tests. The Missouri tests are not what many have been led to believe. They are objective, they are not racially biased, and they are not political. They are not concoctions brewed up in the back room of state government—rather, they are developed by independent experts, grounded in years of research, and focused almost entirely on reading and math.

Without statewide testing, we risk replacing hard data with empty assurances. School districts will insist students are learning—they’re doing exceptionally well, in fact!—and we’ll have no choice but to trust them.

An extreme policy would be to end testing entirely, but an equally damaging policy would be to abandon a common state test and allow school districts to use their own tests. This sounds appealing to local-control advocates, and in fact is the proposal on the table in SB360. But if this were to happen, it would be impossible to compare outcomes across districts, leaving us in the same place as if we had no testing at all.

If you’re unhappy with the direction schools are heading, just wait until we don’t have state tests—and the hard data provided by the tests—to keep them in line.

The post The Testing Bogeyman Is Alive and Well in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri lawmakers are considering a change to the performance levels the state uses to categorize students based on end-of-year test scores. Currently, Missouri categorizes students into one of four performance levels. From lowest to highest, these are: (1) below basic, (2) basic, (3) proficient, and (4) advanced. I believe the meaning of these categories is self-evident, as it should be.

A proposed change in House Bill 607 would add a fifth performance level, called “grade level,” which would fall below the “proficient” category and above the “basic” category.

Wait, what? What does testing at a “proficient” level mean, if not testing at “grade level?” And how can a student test at grade level but not be proficient? Digging a little deeper, the bill defines a student as “proficient” if the student can: “Demonstrate mastery over all appropriate grade-level standards and has introductory-level knowledge for the next grade or level of education.” When I think of what the word “proficient” is intended to communicate, this sounds about right.

But what, then, does the new “grade level” category mean? According to the bill, it also means that the student: “Demonstrates mastery over appropriate grade-level subject matter.” However, it goes onto indicate that a grade level student: “May be ready, with appropriate reinforcement, for the next grade or level of education.” This means that a student could be classified as testing at grade level on end-of-year assessments, even if he or she is not fully ready for the next grade. This does not sound like “grade level” performance to me, and I suspect many Missourians would agree.

This matters for two reasons. First, in case you haven’t been paying attention to national education headlines recently, student learning has been declining for about a decade now, and the decline has accelerated since the COVID pandemic. Missouri is no exception to the national trend. In the face of disappointing academic outcomes, it is important to maintain clear and rigorous standards. We should continue to demand the best from Missouri children. This watered-down version of “grade level” performance seems like a step in the wrong direction, like an implicit acceptance of the fact that our children are learning less in school than their counterparts from a decade ago.

Second, consider when schools and districts report out to the public on student performance. With this new category, they’ll be able to report on the share of students who are performing at “grade level” or higher, but this will not mean what most people will think it means. If I hadn’t read the language of the bill myself, I certainly would not understand it. The definition of “grade level” in the bill, as quoted above, is more appropriately communicated by the term “basic,” which is already a performance category. I want our schools to report on student performance in a transparent manner, rather than obfuscating it.

At first glance, how the state chooses to report out on student test performance may not seem like a big deal. But the more I think about it, the more this bothers me. I cannot think of a single positive rationale for doing this. It is certainly not aspirational. I don’t think it is a stretch to call it dishonest.

I hope the lawmakers in Jefferson City reject this change in the interest of maintaining high standards for our children, and promoting transparency in Missouri government.

The post Legislating Lower Standards for Missouri’s Children? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.