I’ve argued for years that Kansas City’s lavish subsidies distort the market while failing to deliver on economic promises. New reporting from the Kansas City Business Journal suggests the process itself may be just as broken.

Reporter Thomas Friestad reconstructed negotiations among Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), PortKC, and Gillon Property Group over incentives tied to Country Club Plaza. The emails, obtained through an open-records request, depict a rushed and opaque decision-making process worthy of public distrust.

The original proposal reportedly included roughly $309 million in incentives over 30 years. KCPS officials objected not only to the size of the package, but also to shifting valuation methods that obscured the true public cost. The district also sought protection for voter-approved bond revenues and more time to evaluate major revisions before approval by PortKC.

That timeline is the real story.

The emails show negotiations continuing until the night before a scheduled PortKC meeting. KCPS officials argued they were being asked to evaluate a substantially revised proposal in just two business days. One consultant for the district described the timeline as “concerning even with the highest level of independent analysis.”

This is a recurring problem in Kansas City’s incentive culture. Complex tax arrangements are negotiated behind closed doors and then presented to affected taxing jurisdictions with little time for meaningful scrutiny. The result is confusion over the true public cost and distrust among taxpayers expected to finance these deals.

Kansas City has seen this pattern before. Similar concerns surrounded the Power & Light District and continue to emerge in discussions over a proposed downtown ballpark. Political machinations routinely take precedence over transparency and accountability.

Notably, KCPS did not oppose subsidies outright. District officials simply asked for clear terms, accurate projections, and adequate time to evaluate a deal that could affect school finances for decades. The fact that negotiators appeared unwilling to provide sufficient time to evaluate the deal speaks volumes.

Kansas Citians have grown understandably skeptical of these taxpayer-funded deals. Too many projects promised economic transformation and delivered little beyond long-term public cost. The Country Club Plaza negotiations are, at best, an example of rushed incompetence. At worst, they suggest an effort to push a massive subsidy package through before taxpayers and public schools could fully evaluate it.

The post Country Club Plaza Subsidy Deal Reveals What’s Broken in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Paying teachers to get master’s degrees that do not make them more effective is inefficient. Most obviously, it misdirects school district resources—why privilege teachers who get a credential that does not make them better at their jobs when we could use metrics tied to actual performance, or just pay all teachers more? The master’s pay premium also incentivizes teachers to invest tuition money, time, and energy in degrees with no measurable value. And the artificial demand fueled by these policies encourages universities to expand the degree programs themselves. All around, it is a tremendous waste of resources.

A new report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) describes the current national policy landscape with respect to the master’s degree premium. The report identifies Missouri as one of just 15 states that require districts to pay a master’s degree premium. In fact, we just re-upped the policy in 2024 with Senate Bill 727, which raised minimum teacher pay and maintained a new, higher minimum pay standard for teachers with master’s degrees (and at least 10 years of experience).

The NCTQ report also looked at salary schedules in 140 large districts in the United States, including three in Missouri: Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. All three have large pay premiums for teachers with master’s degrees, especially highly experienced teachers. For example, with 20 or more years of experience the premium exceeds $10,000 annually in all three districts, and it gets as high as $18,600 in Kansas City.

This is a steep price to pay for a credential that has been demonstrated repeatedly to have no connection to classroom effectiveness. It’s time to end this practice.

The post We Shouldn’t Pay Teachers for Master’s Degrees appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The new state law creates three types of counties with different rules for property taxes and assessments: five percent counties (75 total counties), zero percent counties (22), and unaffected counties (17). For more details on the differences among these counties, go here.

There are many reasons why these substantial changes to the system are bad. The first one, which I wrote about previously, is that property taxes are generally the least harmful tax for economic growth. So, if you want to create a tax system that encourages greater economic opportunity for all Missourians, the property tax is the last tax you should focus on.

This post is about the absurdity of putting Jackson County in the unaffected category. Jackson County is home to most of Kansas City and is the second-largest county in Missouri. It has had by far the worst administration of assessment and tax collection in recent years of any Missouri county. This is like a patient going to the doctor with a bad left knee and the hospital deciding to amputate their right arm. You made everything worse but didn’t address the main problem that started it all.

The solution to Jackson County’s issues is not to simply make it a zero percent or five percent county. That would cause serious problems over time, which we will eventually see in the other zero and five percent counties in Missouri if the law is upheld in court. What you need in Jackson County is first and foremost better administration. If 113 counties can generally make the assessment and tax process work without being sued by the state tax commission and one cannot, then the problem is with the one county, not with the overall process. Electing the Jackson County Assessor (instead of the assessor being appointed), which will be voted on soon, would be a good start. From a tax bill perspective, ending the rate rollback exemption for the Kansas City 33 School District is a vital change. The main reason bills increase so much in that part of Kansas City is because that district does not have to roll rates back at all, unlike every other taxing body in Missouri. Major reforms were needed in Jackson County, but instead in the special session we got bad legislation that did nothing for the taxpayers there. That’s not a win for anyone.

Future posts will discuss the potential constitutional problems with this bill, the harmful effects of favoring current homeowners over future homeowners, and a discussion of Charles Tiebout and his theories. For more information, please see my testimony from the special session, these policy studies on this issue of property taxes and assessments, and related commentaries.

The post Why the New Property Tax Rules in Missouri Are Bad, Part 2 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Many homeowners in Jackson County had seen their reassessments increase by more than fifteen percent, so this order by the STC was no small thing. Because of the major impacts on tax revenues for various local governments, the county sued the STC to stop the order. The judge ruled the other day, and the county lost.

The county will likely appeal this ruling, but the facts are pretty clear here. The Jackson County Assessor’s Office did not adhere to the requirements of the process, and property owners were harmed by it. I don’t see any way the appeals court changes this ruling (I am not a lawyer), unless the judges decide that the harm to the taxing districts overrides the rights of the property owners.

I have been writing about the history and issues of property reassessments in Jackson County for a long time. One hundred and thirteen counties can get their reassessments done correctly, and one can’t, so the problem is more with the management in Jackson County itself than with the reassessment process overall. Better management of the Jackson County Assessor’s Office is the first needed change. Beyond that, some policy changes are needed for Jackson County, including:

• Electing the assessor (Jackson is the only county in the state with an appointed assessor); and
• Removing the tax rate rollback exemption for the Kansas City 33 School District.

Jackson County may have been underassessed overall, but that doesn’t excuse the county from complying with the reassessment process laws. If the county appeals, I hope it loses again, and quickly.

The post Jackson County Property Tax Assessment Update appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Crystal City is among the first districts to hold such a vote. It will be fascinating to observe the outcome, which may serve as an indicator of how other districts will vote on this issue. It also raises the question of what options will be available to families who disagree with the vote.

Expanding School Choice Would Strengthen Missouri’s Educational Environment

Last year, my colleague James Shuls reported on results from a survey of Missouri parents on the 4dsw and school choice. In one key finding, 69% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement: “If a school district moves from a 5dsw to a 4dsw, parents should be given the option to transfer their children to another school district.” This sentiment was consistent across party lines, with 67% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats in favor. Open enrollment would provide options for families who want something different than what the district decides.

While it is certainly worth mentioning that the 4dsw negatively affects academic performance in mathematics and English/language arts (ELA) on average, this may not be true for everyone, and some students may benefit. For example, supporters of the 4dsw often discuss how a 4dsw can reduce missed days for doctor’s appointments, allow for help on family farms, and lower “burnout” among both students and teachers. But many students need more consistent interaction with academic materials, and the 4dsw is not a good fit for some families’ schedules. The same survey also found that 84% of parents who “are not able to provide childcare on the fifth day” prefer a 5dsw.

Closing Considerations

The number of 4dsw districts grew this past year from 173 to 187 Missouri districts (based on my own compilation of school calendars). This means that about 36% of all Missouri districts use the 4dsw, including nearly half of rural districts.

For districts considering the switch, the research shows that it has several downsides, and on average, it reduces student learning. This suggests proceeding with caution. For parents who disagree with the results of a 4dsw vote, expanding school choice is an appropriate policy response.

Want to read more? Check out these publications:

• A Systematic Literature Review of the Four-Day School Week
• Five for Me: A Survey of Missourians Regarding the Four-Day School Week
• Longer Days and Fewer Total Hours: Examining the Four-Day School Week in Missouri
• Loss of Learning Time in Missouri Public Schools
• Open Enrollment: Erasing Seven Myths in Missouri
• How Will the Four-Day School Week Progress in Light of SB 727?

The post Crystal City to Vote on the Four-Day School Week appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s an obscure state law that every article about government and politics in Kansas City has to include a quote from Harry Truman. As I follow the controversy over the reassessment process in Jackson County, I flash back to my own time working for St. Louis County government during the 2001 “drive-by assessment” scandal. That, in turn, reminds me of this quote from our 33rd President: “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”

In the Spring of 2001, the St. Louis County Assessor had a problem. An enormous number of homes were coming back with a reassessment appraisal increase greater than 17 percent, meaning that a physical (in-person) inspection would be required. The problem was that the assessor had neither the time, the staff, nor (apparently) the desire to schedule in-person inspections of tens of thousands of properties. The solution? Quietly redefine what “physical inspection” meant. The assessor’s office plotted tens of thousands of properties with large valuation increases on maps (probably using Mapquest; Google maps hadn’t been designed yet) and sent assessors off driving around the county. Driving past a house and looking at it was considered a physical inspection. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. Assessments ballooned throughout the county. Taxpayers were livid. They called their council members screaming. A few of them, including my soon-to-be boss, started to investigate. They asked for the filed inspection reports. Once it became clear that individual assessors had somehow been doing several hundred “physical inspections” per day, the scheme was exposed and the scandal exploded.

Huge valuation increases. A poorly managed assessor’s office. Angry taxpayers. Politicians trading blame. Does this sound familiar to residents of Jackson County?

If you look at the property valuations in Jackson County from a decade ago and compare them to valuations in St. Louis, it is hard to dispute that Jackson County property, overall, was underassessed. That is the only partial defense I’ll give to the Jackson County executive and assessor. But for multiple cycles now, especially in 2019 and 2023, the assessor’s office has done a shockingly poor job of managing the reassessment and adhering to the rules of the process. Nobody likes seeing their valuations go up at tax time, but 113 other counties in Missouri seem to be able to reassess property without the process failures that have plagued Jackson County. Taxpayers in Jackson County have every right to be angry.

Taxpayers in St. Louis were angry in 2001, too. Almost immediately, the assessor and revenue director were fired. While it took a few more years, that demand for reforms to the reassessment process led to real change locally and statewide. The law was clarified to define a physical inspection as just that, and the trigger point for an inspection (with homeowner consent, of course) was reduced to the present 15 percent increase in value. Requirements for tax-rate rollbacks by governments were enhanced. Eventually, the St. Louis County charter was changed to make the assessor an elected position. While the present process is far from perfect in the rest of Missouri, the changes that emerged from that 2001 scandal have benefited the entire state.

Which brings us back to Jackson County. Voters and taxpayers need to demand reform. There is already an effort to change the law to elect the assessor, which seems like an obvious improvement. Another change that is needed is to end the tax-rate rollback exemption for the Kansas City School District. Despite its substantial increase in assessed values in 2023 (which is still being contested in court), the district voted once again to keep its tax rate the same. Every other taxing body in Missouri has to roll its tax rate back to at least partially offset assessment increases, but the Kansas City School District gets to enjoy its windfall on the backs of taxpayers. Finally, Jackson County could consider using variable property tax rates, as St. Louis County does, to allow for greater ability to adjust rates by property type in response to future changes.

Other changes would be easier and don’t require amending the law. Why the Jackson County assessor still has her job after all this mismanagement is a mystery to me.

The 2001 reassessment disaster in St. Louis led to improvements to the overall process that are still in place today, at least everywhere but in Jackson County. Hopefully, the ongoing controversy over the 2023 reassessments in Jackson County can lead to similar, lasting reforms. Jackson County taxpayers deserve nothing less.

The post Jackson County Assessment Disputes Will (Hopefully) Lead to Real Change This Time appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As of today, no local school board has ever sponsored a charter school in their district, despite having the ability to do so. Until that trend is broken, the creation of charter schools depends on securing sponsorship from other state-approved entities, such as:

• 4-year universities;
• Community colleges;
• Private universities;
• Technical schools; or
• the Missouri Charter Public School Commission.

House Bill (HB) 1044 would expand charter access by allowing any state-approved sponsor to authorize a charter school in districts located within a charter county or in any municipality with greater than 30,000 inhabitants. This bill would be a major step toward increasing educational options, fostering competition, and driving innovation in Missouri.

Which School Districts Would HB 1044 Apply To?

Charter school expansion in this bill would be limited to school districts in or partly in St. Louis County, Kansas City, Jefferson County, Clay County, St. Charles County, St. Joseph, Springfield, Columbia, Joplin, Jefferson City, and Cape Girardeau. According to my analysis of the bill language, only around 60 school districts would be included.

It should be noted that if a district has been provisionally accredited (or unaccredited) for three consecutive years, any of the listed state-approved entities can sponsor a charter school in that district. Recently, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission created a charter school called the Leadership School in the provisionally accredited Normandy Schools Collaborative.

The Need to Create a Truly Choice-Rich Educational Marketplace

Expanding charter access is a good step, but it is only one part of building a stronger educational marketplace. Open enrollment is another necessary policy for our state, and it can actually amplify the potential benefits a charter school can bring.

For example, the Arizona Autism Charter Schools attract families from significant distances, with some parents commuting as far as 50 miles to access better services for their children. This opportunity exists partly due to Arizona’s open enrollment policies, which enable the charter to serve students across the entire region rather than just one district.

HB 1044 again moves Missouri in the right direction, but there should be no restrictions on where charter schools can operate. Of the 43 states with charter schools, Missouri is the only state without a rural charter. That needs to change, as educational entrepreneurs across the state should be able to go to the Missouri Charter Public School Commission if the local school district denies their application.

Missouri must build on last session’s momentum and create a stronger, more competitive, and more innovative educational landscape where every family can access high-quality options, no matter where they live.

The post HB 1044 and Expanding Charter Schools in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like these other ongoing sagas, Jackson County’s assessment practices have been getting worse, though they were never great to being with. As bad as the situation was in 2019 and earlier, in 2023 it hit bottom.

The Missouri State Tax Commission (STC) has taken the unprecedented step of ordering Jackson County to essentially ditch the 2023 reassessment and move every change in assessed valuation (AV) that was over a 15 percent increase down to 15 percent. The total AV increase for Jackson County was almost 25 percent, which is enormous. Obviously, if the total increase was 25 percent, a substantial number of individual properties had to go up more than that 15 percent number. (The 15 percent level is key because that is where additional taxpayer notification laws come into play.)

This change lowers the assessed valuation for tens of thousands of properties and involves hundreds of millions in AV. According to Jackson County, the total amount of tax revenue disputed here for various local governments is $117 million. (The AV would be significantly higher than the tax revenues.)

Jackson County has been underassessed for decades. Jackson County has been attempting to correct that in recent years (under direction from the STC), and that is a good thing. More accurate assessments don’t have to lead to higher taxes, except in the Kansas City 33 school district, but’s that another issue. However, Jackson County officials seem to think that their attempts to correct prior errors somehow exempt them from following the current laws. As a county official admits in the just-filed lawsuit against the STC order :

This filing is not just about the legalities—it’s about safeguarding the resources that support our schools, public safety and community programs. [emphasis mine]

Fortunately for taxpayers, good intent does not exempt you from following the laws in reassessment. As the STC order states, the Jackson County assessors made all sorts of mistakes in 2023:

9. The Commission finds and determines that in conducting its biennial reassessment for 2023, Jackson County assessing officials failed to give proper notice to property owners and failed to perform physical inspections as required by Section 137.115 RSMo. where the assessed valuation of residential real property increased by more than fifteen percent since the last assessment, resulting in mistaken or erroneous assessments and taxes that were mistakenly or erroneously levied or paid in 2023 . . .

The STC order goes into more detail on a number of failures by the assessor’s office.

The order may well impose a major burden on taxing agencies in Jackson County that must now redo their valuations and property tax rates. But just because it’s a major burden doesn’t mean taxpayers should have to accept having their rights violated.

I hope the Jackson County lawsuit fails and the STC order is upheld. The county assessor should not be allowed to ignore the very clear rules—rules that every other county assessor had managed to follow in recent years—that protect the rights of property owners. This may be a mess in Jackson County, but it is a mess of the county’s own creation.

The post Jackson County Assessment Facts, Part Four appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Patrick Tuohey, senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, about the Kansas City 33 School District’s recent proposal to issue $424 million in bonds for building improvements. Despite a significant decline in enrollment and a previous failed bond referendum, KCPS is asking taxpayers to fund this initiative through increased property taxes. They discuss whether new buildings can truly address the district’s deeper issues, such as poor academic performance and declining enrollment, if the funds could be better spent elsewhere, and more.

Listen on Spotify

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post New Schools, Old Problems: The KCPS Bond Proposal with Patrick Tuohey appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So it seems surprising that KCPS is asking taxpayers to approve spending $424 million to buy bonds to improve buildings in the district. These bonds require an increase in the property tax rate that would cost the owner of a $200,000 home an additional $231 in property taxes each year. That seems like a lot.

The last time KCPS tried to convince taxpayers to do this, the bond referendum failed because, according to the superintendent, “families weren’t inspired” by the plan. This time, the goal is to send any student who has to move or whose school is closed to a new or newer school. The claim is that this will make the students feel more important and more worthy.

KCPS is certainly struggling. Last year, despite spending over $22,000 per student, only 22 percent scored on grade level in reading and 21 percent did so in math. In other words, four out of five students are below grade level. It’s not surprising that families have turned to charter schools.

The question is—will new buildings turn that around? The district plans to spend more than $50,000 per child on these capital improvements. Could that money be better spent in the existing classrooms?

The post Are New Buildings the Answer? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) is focusing on boosting reading instruction for this upcoming school year. Specifically, KCPS is requiring all early elementary teachers, reading specialists, and other reading-adjacent teachers to learn evidence-based reading methods through LETRS. LETRS, passed in 2022, is a program designed to retrain Missouri’s K–5 teaching force in the science of reading.

The director of elementary curriculum at KCPS stated: “Teachers that are coming into the profession just don’t have the science of reading background from universities.” According to the National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), this is a valid claim.

The NCTQ conducted a survey to evaluate which universities are implementing scientifically based reading instruction into their curriculum for future teachers—and the results are concerning. Per the survey, only 25 percent of higher education institutions nationally adequately address all five core components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) of reading instruction. Missouri is no better, as nearly half of our participating universities received an F grade on the NCQT’s report.

There are still 70 districts and charters that are not participating at all in the LETRS program, and many more are not embracing evidence-based reading instruction. Reading achievement has improved in states that embraced this practice. If reams and reams of research support the use of evidence-based reading instruction, then why are districts ignoring it? How are our students learning instead? Why are our universities neglecting to properly educate prospective teachers? These are questions that Missouri parents deserve to have answered.

The post KCPS is Getting Serious About Evidence-Based Reading appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I am going to take these one at a time because, frankly, this stuff is so hot I doubt you all can take any more than that. Let’s start with one of the most pressing issues where the voters are actually in charge.

As a relic of Kansas City’s famous school desegregation case, Kansas City 33 School District’s (KCSD) tax rate is managed by the constitution, not statute. Under the Missouri Constitution, article 10, section 11(g), KCSD is exempt from property tax rollbacks when assessments increase, leading to dramatic tax hikes on Kansas City residents in recent years. Trust me when I say that the KCSD has reveled in this fact and ostentatiously kept rates high despite enormous assessment increases during the past three (at least) reassessment cycles.

Here is the exact language:

Operating levy for Kansas City school district may be set by school board. — The school board of any school district whose operating levy for school purposes for the 1995 tax year was established pursuant to a federal court order may establish the operating levy for school purposes for the district at a rate that is lower than the court-ordered rate for the 1995 tax year.  The rate so established may be changed from year to year by the school board of the district.  Approval by a majority of the voters of the district voting thereon shall be required for any operating levy for school purposes equal to or greater than the rate established by court order for the 1995 tax year.  The authority granted in this section shall apply to any successor school district or successor school districts of such school district.

Voters need to repeal this section entirely. That means we need a ballot measure approved either by initiative petition or by the legislature allowing us to vote on a repeal. By repealing this constitutional provision, KCSD’s tax rate would be governed by the same rules as all other taxing jurisdictions in Missouri. That’s all. As assessments increase, rates would roll back at least in part to offset the tax hikes. Voters in the district could, of course, raise the rate if they chose to.

We should care about property tax rates for everyone, not just wealthy suburbanites. The residents of KCSD don’t deserve these constant tax increases. This provision may have been useful a while ago when the desegregation case was ending, but it is no longer needed.

The post One Way to Actually Do Something about Kansas City Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Wanting to do something to address higher property assessments and taxes should not mean doing the wrong thing, though, and doing the wrong thing is where we are headed. Giving one population group a tax or assessment freeze, as state law allows counties to do this year and which many are considering, is wrong for reasons you can read here. A more comprehensive limit on the rise in assessed valuations or taxes, similar to what California famously did with Prop 13 in 1978, is also the wrong thing to do. Proposition 13 has certainly had its intended effect of making it easier for California residents to stay in their own homes. However, it has also reduced mobility, dramatically increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities among similar properties receiving similar services. This is not what we need for Missouri.

The easiest way to address that—for local governments to voluntarily roll their tax rates back more than legally required (as St. Charles County did in 2022)—is unlikely to happen in most places and especially unlikely for school districts, which make up the bulk of your tax bill. So, what else can we do about property taxes and assessments?

There are things people and government can do in the short term to make the overall process better. Right now, people should be pressuring their local officials to roll tax rates back, especially the Kansas City school district which is the only taxing body in the state exempt from rate rollbacks. Removing that constitutional exemption for KCSD should also be a high priority. That would involve amending the state constitution, but it should be a high priority to get that on the ballot in the next legislative session.

While we are addressing short-term impacts and constitutional changes, adding personal property to the tax rate rollback requirements should absolutely be done. In 2021 and 2022, many local governments enjoyed a windfall from increased used car values. That is not how the system is supposed to work.

Finally, did you know that a few counties require certificates of value to be filed with the assessor when property is sold but most do not? We should require them statewide to help make assessments more accurate, especially in rural areas.

In my next post, I’ll discuss what we can do in the long run to make our property tax and assessment system better.

The post So, What Exactly Should Missouri Do about Property Taxes and Assessments? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It seems those families have made the right choice. The highest-quality research on the academic impact of charter schools consistently comes from the Stanford Center for Research on Education, also known as CREDO. Because charter schools are independently run, they often cater to unique populations of students, which makes them difficult to compare to traditional public schools. Further, some argue that charter schools “skim the cream”—only taking the best students— giving them an unfair advantage. CREDO overcomes this by creating a “virtual twin” for each charter school student. This twin is a student (or combination of students) with identical traits and prior year test scores who attended the same traditional public school that the charter school student would have attended. CREDO’s most recent study matched 1.9 million charter school students with 6.5 million traditional public school students.

Then, to make the studies user friendly, the complex results are translated into days of learning. Imagine a 4th grader performing at exactly the state average on the state’s math or reading test. Then imagine that same student doing that again in 5th grade. That student would then have exactly average academic growth in one year, or 180 days of growth, based on the typical school year.

CREDO’s most recent report found that Missouri charter school students gained 39 more days of growth in reading and 56 more days of growth in math than their matched twins in KCPS and SLPS. Those results are staggering. Students in charter schools gained one quarter to one third of a year of learning more than their traditional public school peers.

So, should Missouri open more charter schools? Or should districts sign moratoriums to prevent expansion? Should families in Springfield or Columbia be able to access these schools that have an incentive to perform? Or should they remain stuck in their declining public schools? Critics continue to say that charter schools are an unproven fad. The CREDO research should cause them to think twice about that claim.

The post Missouri Charter School Students Win appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For accredited districts (districts that meet the academic standards set by the state), only the local school board can sponsor a charter school. This has served as a formidable roadblock to charter school formation, as no accredited district has sponsored a charter school. However, if a school district is unaccredited (districts that fail to meet the standards set by the state) for three consecutive years, or has been provisionally accredited for three consecutive years, any of the other entities mentioned in the above paragraph can sponsor a charter school. Recently, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission created a charter school called the Leadership School in the provisionally accredited Normandy Schools Collaborative.

While the Missouri Legislature is most likely not thinking of charter schools in terms of nightclubs, the prospect of charter school expansion is being discussed to make the list less exclusive. Senate Bill (SB) 304 would allow charter schools to be created in any municipality with a population of more than 30,000 or any school district located within a county with a charter form of government. If SB 304 passed, charter schools could be established in:

• All currently eligible districts
• School districts in the following counties: St. Louis, Jackson, St. Charles, Jefferson, and Clay (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)
• School districts in municipalities with more than 30,000 residents, which currently includes: Cape Girardeau, Jefferson City, Joplin, Springfield, and Columbia (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)

SB 304 would be a solid first step to give parents outside of St. Louis and Kansas City more options. Columbia is a good example of a city whose residents could benefit greatly from this bill. In Columbia , English/language arts (ELA) and mathematics scores are below the state average—students in the district currently have 43.8% and 30.8% proficiency rates, respectively. Low-income students are particularly struggling, with rates of 24% and 13.1% in ELA and mathematics—around 7 points below the state average for low-income students. With these scores in mind, maybe a family in Columbia wants a charter school because it is unsatisfied with the instruction in the local district. Perhaps a low-income family could find a charter school that specializes in instruction for low-income students. Charter schools can provide these needed alternative options for Columbia families, and SB 304 would make it possible.

Charter schools of various types (classical, English as a second language, low-income, etc.) have opened in Kansas City and St. Louis. One school, University Academy, has been named a “Blue Ribbon School” (an honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education for schools that exemplify excellence). Families across the state want and need more options. Missouri is a diverse state, and families deserve a diverse array of options to cater to their children’s needs and hold education institutions accountable.

The post Expanding the VIP List for Charter School Eligibility appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This year in Jefferson City (as with every year) there are numerous proposals to implement such changes.

We have an example of this in California. In 1978, the state passed Proposition 13, which limited the increases in property assessments and taxes (although, to be clear, Proposition 13 went further than the proposed changes in Missouri would). Proposition 13 has certainly had its intended effect of making it easier for California residents to stay in their own homes. However, it has also reduced mobility, dramatically increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities for similar properties with similar services. I would not say that it has been an overall win for the state.

I support changes to our reassessment and tax system that keep assessments accurate while addressing the tax rate aspect of property taxes, as Senate Bill (SB) 711 did in Missouri about fifteen years ago. That bill required real estate tax rates to roll back no matter where the rate was in relation to its voter-approved rate cap, and that was a beneficial change. It is time now to expand the roll back provisions to personal property taxes, county commercial surcharges, and property taxes levied by the Kansas City school district.

A much more radical change I would like to see is an end to reassessments of individual properties. This is a costly and cumbersome process that is not needed in the days of Zillow. We could change the entire process to:

• Set home values at sale price (assuming a fair market transaction).
• During the biennial reassessments, determine the average increase for an area, such as a county, and raise or lower everyone’s assessed value by that amount, leaving an option for appeals in unusual cases and additional increases for home improvements, etc.
• Then—and this is key—roll back everyone’s taxes by the same percentage to offset the assessment increase. This eliminates the unfair tax hit that people whose assessments go up more than average currently face.
• Reset values at sale, as happens now.

This proposal doesn’t favor seniors over others, doesn’t lead to dramatic differences in property assessments and taxes for similar homes, and keeps the base broad. As I like to say, assessments should be as accurate as possible and the tax base should be as wide as possible so that the tax rate can be as low as possible for everyone to fund the necessary functions of local government.

As for senior citizens, funding the existing property tax “circuit breaker” program to help low-income seniors stay in their homes with targeted tax refunds is a better way to achieve this goal.

That about sums it up for me.

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Overall, the responses we’ve received so far in 2022 look generally like what we saw in 2021. Most schools either have not responded to our request for information or have denied teaching CRT. Some schools have opted to try and charge the Institute hundreds of thousands of dollars to get access to school curriculum, and many more wanted to charge smaller fees. What has been rare, however, is schools openly providing documents that include CRT-type material. Last year, the most prominent example of this was the Kansas City Public School District.

But another notable example from last year was the Hazelwood School District. Hazelwood was one district that provided CRT-related materials when the Institute sent requests last year, and at that time its curriculum included excerpts of the 1619 project being taught to fourth graders and materials provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center about “Teaching for Tolerance.” When Hazelwood responded to this year’s request, the district sent basically the same documents it did last year, though this time without any fourth-grade curriculum, indicating that content was removed from the curricula.

Our director of government accountability, Patrick Ishmael, has been critical of CRT concepts. But it’s important to remember that regardless of the content of the instruction, the public has a right to see it and districts have an obligation to provide it.

Hazelwood should be commended for its honesty and forthrightness in response to our inquiries, both last year and this year. Through two iterations of the project, it is the only district that to date has twice released the pertinent curriculum without any fees, delays, or complaints.

The point here is that if school districts are going to spend taxpayer money to educate students regarding a subject, including CRT, they should make the information available to parents. Ideally, all districts would be transparent with curriculum and would post it on their website or send it to parents before the start of a school year. After all, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if government transparency can improve curricula, our schools and our kids will be better off for it.

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However, the most obvious difference between the 2021 and 2022 requests isn’t the quicker time frame and greater participation. It’s higher prices—far higher prices. If we had paid for every school to respond fully to our request in 2021, the total bill would have come out to $59,980.63. In 2022, we would have paid $908,192.38. The average requested cost was $3,332.26 in 2021; it was $26,711.54 in 2022.

A significant amount of the massive price increase can be attributed to a group of three schools in the center of the state that each charged over $100,000 (I’ll discuss these schools in more detail in a later post). Still, ten other districts raised their estimates by at least $1,000, with the largest increase coming from rural Neelyville, which asked for $56,218.95. In 2021, Neelyville said it had no responsive documents to our request and did not bill us.

It’s not clear what is driving the huge price increase from Neelyville. Given that we have received underwhelming and disappointing responses from both small districts and large districts, it would seem the differences in curricular openness depend mostly on whether there’s a “culture of transparency” at a school, not whether critical race theory is present in the curriculum. (Just ask Kansas City Public Schools, which readily provided its school’s curricula and posts supporting these ideas in response to our request last year!) If nothing else, it would seem Neelyville’s “culture of transparency” has declined in the last 12 months.

In the end, schools choose whether their cultures will include transparency or not, and the estimates we’ve received in our curriculum requests show a troubling trend toward noncompliance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In Kansas City, a large number of students attend charter schools. But because charter school funding comes from the local district’s state funding pool, which is finite, there is effectively a cap. Once the local district ran out of state money, charter school students stopped receiving a full share. This has led to charter school leaders trying to negotiate with Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) to please dip into their local education revenue to fully fund what charter school students should, by right, be getting in state funding. This will no longer be necessary, as state funding will cover the difference.

More importantly, by fixing this glitch, the legislature and the governor have removed the disincentive to open more charter schools in Kansas City or for existing charter schools to expand and try to move families off waiting lists. I truly believe—and the pandemic has only exacerbated this—that Missouri families want more education options, not fewer. The legislature has been slowly moving in the right direction with Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), improving access to the Missouri Course Access (MOCAP) virtual program, and giving parents direct access to federal stimulus money in the form of Close the Gap scholarships. Let’s keep this momentum going.

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