Almost certainly. (And I’m only adding the “almost” because it is being litigated over and you never know how it will turn out.)

This isn’t the first time grocery stores have been targeted by special taxing districts simply because developers want the significant money they generate. In Wentzville, a Schnucks store was forcibly included in a CID that was used to help fund a Walmart development. If that sounds insane, it is. One grocery company, Schnucks, was forced to levy a special tax against its will to benefit one of its main competitors.

In St. Louis, an existing CID board tried to expand the CID’s boundaries to include another  Schnucks, primarily to get access to all of the money it generated. Schnucks opposed that one, too, and good for the company. As the company explained in a letter to elected officials:

It is our position that addressing the problem goes beyond additional cleaning, and we would encourage the City to tap into funds available to address these issues, rather than institute an additional tax on citizens who are buying their needed groceries for their families.

Grocery stores are not large ATMs with food in them that special taxing districts can extort whenever they feel like it. Good for Hy-Vee for fighting back in Lee’s Summit, and good for Schnucks to have opposed these ideas previously. Special taxing districts like CIDs and TDDs are, in the vast majority of cases, nothing more than vehicles for corporate welfare. They are bad enough even when all the property owners agree. But compelling grocery chains to participate in them against the will of the stores is just the sour cherry on top.

The post Hy-Vee Wants to Give the Heave-Ho to a CID appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Is it Johnny-come-lately political theater? Is it a principled beef against higher taxes on behalf of citizens? The court will decide!

Blue Springs will join one of its neighbors [Independence] and become the third city suing Jackson County over property tax assessments. . . .

“The mayor and City Council are authorizing legal action to ensure the residents of Blue Springs receive a fair and consistent process for the assessment of real property in compliance with state law,” the City Council said in a statement Thursday. . . .

Last month, Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said his office’s whistleblower hotline has received complaints about significantly higher property assessments, not being able to get through the phone line, and software company Tyler Technology making decisions it might not be qualified to make.

The lawsuits by the cities are in addition to the class action lawsuit filed privately by residents on similar issues, asserting (in short) failures of notice and process by the county. For example, the Lee’s Summit suit asserts that the state’s requirement that a reassessment be the result of a physical inspection was not met for this year’s reassessment, and the Independence suit asserts that the county failed to meet a variety of deadlines, among other statutory violations.

Whether anything comes of this stack of lawsuits remains to be seen, but the fact remains that property tax reform should be a priority for legislators and county leaders in 2024, so that future reassessments will be predictable and reasonable for Missourians statewide. As for Kansas City, my colleague David Stokes would remind policymakers that the constitutional exemption that allows the Kansas City public school district to not roll its tax rate back as property assessments increase is a major issue that should be grappled with sooner, not later.

The post And Then There Were Three: Blue Springs Joins Jackson County Property Tax Lawsuit Party appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

The Demonstration Project is a formal trial implemented with the goal of determining whether the Missouri Assessment Project (MAP) (which tests at the end of the year) should be replaced with an individualized and continuous system. I have discussed the details, benefits, and concerns with this project in two previous posts. If this new system sees success, Missouri could try to incorporate it statewide.

What will change for students this year?

Students in these 20 districts will be tested more frequently—three times in English/language arts (ELA) and three times in math (45 minutes for each subject), and the assessments will be on a computer. Students should know that it is an adaptive test, meaning the test will change in real time based on the responses—if a student misses questions, the test offers easier questions and vice versa. For a test taker, this means one cannot afford to make any careless mistakes. On traditional tests, all questions are weighted equally, so if one accidentally marks bubble C instead of bubble B, it will count as one mistake. However, if one accidentally picks bubble C or carelessly forgets to flip the sign on a negative number, the adaptive test will count it wrong and think the student cannot do harder problems since one of the easier problems was missed. Therefore, students should double check their work, because a careless mistake on the wrong problem can tank their score.

Students in these 20 districts will also take the MAP this year. The federal government mandates that every district in a state participate in a uniform standardized test. The MAP is a federally approved and mandated test, so any exemption from taking the MAP would have to come directly from the federal government. These 20 districts have requested a federal waiver, and we will see whether it is accepted or not.

What will change for parents?

The results of these student assessments will return quickly via an online form, and there will be a detailed breakdown of each student’s strengths and weaknesses (here is an example of adaptive test results). A dashboard will also be designed to report annual performance targets and goals. Page 29 of this report shows a sample dashboard. A parent should be able to access information relating to their district via the dashboard.

Hopefully this new trial will yield success that can help us find better ways to teach and assess our students.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Get the Green Light to Try New Assessment System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This waiver is being requested in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in order to conduct a formal study (called the Demonstration Project) to determine if a new testing system should replace the existing MAP. If the exemption is granted, these districts would use their own test but would not administer the MAP. If the waiver is denied, these twenty districts would use their own test and also administer the MAP.

The MAP test is traditionally given to 3rd through 8th-grade students in Missouri at the end of the school year to evaluate their understanding in mathematics, English/language arts, and science. MAP testing also includes End of Course (EOC) tests for high school students who have completed four chosen subjects—Algebra I (or II if you took Algebra I in middle school), Government, Biology, and English II.

The Demonstration Project will use an adaptive testing system, which will test students and provide timely results three times per year. An adaptive test essentially learns who a test-taker is. As students miss questions, the prompts become easier, and vice versa. Through this process, a computer algorithm can learn a student’s skill set, provide a detailed report to the teacher, remember it, and use that student’s proficiency as a baseline for the next standardized test. In practice, a student will sit down at a computer for 90 minutes to take one 45-minute adaptive test on ELA and one 45-minute adaptive test on mathematics three times per year. Since this system is online and designed for quick feedback, a detailed breakdown of how each student performed will be provided to teachers and parents in order to help students improve throughout the year. The new state assessment will shift from a “lagging” indicator to a “leading indicator.” This system will require 280 less minutes of testing time and will cost $21.60 more per student annually.

Below are the 20 districts that are seeking exemption from the MAP:

• Affton, Branson, Center, Confluence Academies, Fayette, Lebanon, Lee’s Summit, Lewis County, Liberty, Lindbergh, Lonedell, Mehlville, Neosho, Ozark, Parkway, Pattonville, Raymore-Peculiar, Ritenour, Ste. Genevieve, and Shell Knob

These 20 districts roughly represent the demographics of Missouri, with huge districts, rural districts, and a charter school (although low-income students are underrepresented).

The study was created because of doubts about the effectiveness of the MAP; as the Demonstration Project proposal states, “The MAP was never intended as a progress monitoring tool at the student level.” Since the MAP is administered at the end of the year, districts do not receive test results until fall of the following year. Districts claim that makes it very difficult to make adjustments and corrections within the school year if a student is struggling in a certain subject. They also claim that adaptive standardized testing throughout the year would allow teachers and administrators to make adjustments to help students before the next school year. (There are reasons to take these complaints from districts with a grain of salt, which I will get into in my next blog post.)

It will be interesting to see if this trial is successful. The desire to try something different than MAP (which traces its origins back to 1993) raises plenty of questions in itself, and I will discuss those issues also in my next post.

The post 20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The cities covered in the report are:

• Ballwin
• Blue Springs
• Cape Girardeau
• Chesterfield
• Columbia
• Florissant
• Independence
• Jefferson City
• Joplin
• Kansas City
• Lee’s Summit
• O’Fallon
• Springfield
• St. Charles
• St. Joseph
• City of St. Louis
• St. Peters
• University City
• Wentzville
• Wildwood

Click here to read more, or download the report by clicking on the link below.

The post Tax Burden in Missouri’s 20 Largest Cities appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Using tax subsidies for economic development rarely benefits the public. Instead, it lowers the risk and increases the returns for the private investors. Under a capitalist system, the relationship between risk and reward for investors can a wonderful thing, but in recent decades the government has somehow decided the public should get involved in private business dealings with tax subsidies and incentives. Taxpayers in Independence were left holding the bag for the failed Bass Pro tax increment financing (TIF) plan, and most economic development schemes are like an expensive game of musical chairs where the taxpayer is always the one with nowhere to sit.

The Paragon Star development, which includes youth athletic fields, hotels, office space, apartments, restaurants, and more, has already been approved for significant taxpayer subsidies, including a $32 million TIF, another $32 million in transportation bonds, and $5 million in special sales taxes. Now the developers are requesting $6 million in neighborhood improvement district (NID) subsidies. Keeping track of all the TIFs, CIDs, NIDs, and more requires an advanced degree in acronyms.

Subsidizing all of this in the floodplain of the Little Blue River makes it even more absurd. In fact, as of August 28, using TIF in the floodplain in most of Missouri will be illegal. But Lee’s Summit has nothing to fear; Jackson County got itself exempted from that law. It will remain perfectly legal in Jackson County to use tax subsidies to develop in the floodplain, which will raise the height of the water in the next flood—causing more damage than before and requiring public money to rescue or reimburse those harmed. As insane as it is, it all makes perfect sense in the world of the developer-subsidy complex.

I have no illusions that the Lee’s Summit city council will deny the NID and risk the project at this late point. There are eleven current TIFs within the city, whose leaders seems to believe that it must subsidize its way to growth. Numerous economic studies have proven the fallacy of that belief. Prosperous, desirable communities like Lee’s Summit are fully capable of economic growth without tax subsidies. However, part-time city councilmembers are rarely willing or able to fight back against the well-paid phalanx of lawyers, planners, and lobbyists that developers employ in their quest for other people’s tax dollars.

Whether it is a TIF, CID, or NID, the taxpayers are always the ones without a chair when the music stops. I hope the citizens of Lee’s Summit realize this before it is too late.

The post Lee’s Summit Is Generous to a Fault appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Lee’s Summit’s Paragon Star Development appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While Lee’s Summit stands out for its fee demands, it isn’t alone in its dubious Sunshine Law practices. Last month the St. Louis public school district said it had no records responsive to my identical request of it and would send any if found. After a month without records being sent and after being told again it had no records to send, I informed the district that I knew it had responsive records and showed evidence, at which point the district suddenly, er, remembered it did have some of the documents I had asked for. Thanks to the insiders I’ve gotten to know and the documents I’ve received to date, I anticipate the “memories” of districts statewide are going to be jogged often in the weeks ahead.

It isn’t just some “big city” problem, either. A number of rural districts also have gotten my attention, with Morgan Co. R-I demanding $15,000 for its records. I’m still waiting for a list of how that number was arrived at. Districts and schools that received my inquiries but haven’t responded at all won’t escape scrutiny either; after all, they’re breaking the law by not responding.

The Sunshine Law process is pretty simple. Once a Sunshine Law request is received by a government body, it has three days to respond. Governments can charge reasonable fees for securing and transmitting documents, but they can also waive those fees when the documents requested are in the public interest. Agencies can and do consult lawyers, but in my experience lawyers aren’t the ones interacting with records requestors. Of the over 2,700 requests I’ve sent out to schools and districts, I’ve dealt with a lawyer directly only about a half dozen times, almost exclusively by email, and almost always in ways that would be indistinguishable from interaction with lay staff. In other words, it’s unusual when an attorney gets highly involved, but it isn’t always notable. The Sunshine Law process is that straightforward.

Some of the most outrageous interactions I’ve had so far are with districts that go out of their way to create the illusion of compliance with the Sunshine Law only to use supposed research and production costs to discourage inquiries and withhold public documents. By far the most eyebrow-raising district behavior in that vein has been from the Springfield Public School District.

On June 14th—about an hour after I sent out my Sunshine Law requests to schools and districts statewide—I received a phone call from an attorney representing the Springfield Public School District who (in short) wanted to find out what I was doing with the information I was seeking. I explained plainly to him that I was going to post everything online for the public to see.

The phone conversation, which lasted about half an hour, alternated between friendly and direct. At one point I was told that the only return I’d probably get would be for the term “whiteness,” and it would be from some art textbook. I chuckled that that’s always possible, but the attorney was quick to say that he was joking. The call concluded, and I waited for Springfield’s written response to my request, which was provided days later.

I mention the “whiteness” remark because included in Springfield’s very legalistic response demanding nearly $2,000 for records—signed by its custodian of records—was this odd tidbit:

A review of the District’s approved curriculum documents revealed only one book which has been approved in the past for use in the District’s High School literature classes, and it is not currently being used, that used the term “whiteness.” That book, Brave New World, uses the term once on page 15 in a sentence that reads: “…also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.”

Am I to believe that in three days someone at the Springfield Public School District not only went through the curricula and lesson plans district wide and found nothing, but also went through books the district was no longer using by hand to search for terms and designate a page number? As the attorney suggested, the only term that the district discovered had to do with “whiteness,” and only in connection with something outside of the CRT context. Quite a coincidence.

I have contacted hundreds of districts and thousands of schools. No one besides Springfield has returned a result for a piece of literature, let alone one that was no longer taught. None have returned a result from an art or language arts class, either. In my opinion, Springfield’s was the kind of response a lawyer would deliver to flout the text and spirit of the Sunshine Law, and the demand for thousands of dollars was an added (but expected) insult that local governments often will present to stop transparency requests. This isn’t my first rodeo; we saw these ridiculous demands from local governments for their checkbooks, too.

I replied to Springfield by asking whether the district’s response represented the records held by the schools as well. I received a non-responsive answer. At the end of June, I sent a second Sunshine Law request for emails from within the district that related to our Sunshine Law correspondence. In July I got a response from the new custodian of records who had a remarkably similar writing style to the last custodian of records, and who now presented a bill for over $4,000 for that request, at a different and higher rate for “redaction and processing” activities the district said it would have to undertake. I asked for an explanation for that rate difference; I have received none.

I asked for the district to remove attorney time expenses, which is what the law requires, given the costs that were driving both estimates were related to redactions the district said had to be made and privileged correspondence the district said had to be excised. The district responded that attorney time expenses weren’t included. Really? So lay people are making the determinations about materials subject to attorney–client privilege and other legally sensitive redactions?

What is Springfield concerned about disclosing?

Sitting in the background throughout this process has been the fact that the Springfield Public School District is already under fire for the CRT-informed trainings it’s conducted with teachers. The idea that these professional trainings aren’t informing district curricula or lesson plans, explicitly and implicitly, doesn’t seem credible, and the refusal of the district to exercise complete openness and transparency in showing what is being taught to kids is wrong.

Parents and taxpayers deserve to know what their kids are being taught. If a district, school, or teacher doesn’t want to share that information, then they shouldn’t be teaching it.

The post The Unbelievable “Whiteness” of Springfield Public Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

$40,609.01. That’s what the Lee’s Summit School District wants to complete our Sunshine Law request. From the email:

The total amount that would need to be received to begin the discovery of the records requested would be $40,609.01. I do want to let you know that I have been conservative with the time estimates in order not to inflate the payment amount. However, it very well could require additional time, thus payment, in order to comply with all your requests. [Emphasis mine]

That figure looks bad, but it’s actually far worse than that. The main cost driver for the estimate is the request for whether teachers are including CRT in their lesson plans, and for that, the district estimates it would cost $35,997 per quarter!

That’s right—if you want to find out what’s in Lee’s Summit’s lesson plans for a full year, it looks like you’d be on the hook for over $140,000.

Organization and efficiency of reviewing all lesson plans would need to be a priority in this task. Therefore, I am suggesting that we review one quarter at a time. Each teacher has their own pay rate, depending on degrees completed and years of service. For purposes of this estimate, I will use the lowest hourly pay rate for a teacher which would be $27.69. I also will estimate one hour per teacher to review one quarter of the school year. For us, the first quarter will begin on August 25 and end on October 22. The total estimate would be 1300 hours @ $27.69 = $35,997. [Emphasis mine]

You can peruse the full correspondence at the link. We were able to get a handful of documents from Lee’s Summit prior to this demand; I don’t know what, if anything, changed since then, though it should be noted that the district has been in the news lately over a racial controversy.

Regardless, it’s not just startling that the district would demand tens of thousands of dollars for these records; it’s startling that the district apparently has no idea what teachers are actually teaching in their classrooms. Putting up an absurd barrier like this and preventing parents from seeing what their kids are being taught is bad governance. Lee’s Summit parents deserve better.

The post Lee’s Summit School District Wants $40,000 to Show What It’s Teaching Kids appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

School choice legislation is under consideration in the Missouri legislature, which means it is time for the same misleading argument against the effort to be trotted out—school choice programs “defund” public education.  If the voices of the educational establishment are to be believed, allowing even a small number of students to find an educational option other than the traditional public school that they are residentially assigned to will lead to larger class sizes, decreased offerings for students, and lower teacher pay.

None of that is true. In fact, it is a veritable pinata of falsehood and unclear thinking that can be whacked from many different angles. Here are four ways in which this argument is wrongheaded.

First, it is important to think about how schools are funded. A large portion of funding comes via local property taxes. This funding stream flows into schools regardless of the number of students that attend them. A levy is instituted against the value of homes and property in an area and sent to local school districts. If 10 or 100 or 1,000 students leave, local funding is untouched. Don’t believe us? Check your property tax bill.

Schools also receive funding from the state on a weighted, per-student basis. This is where the second bit of slippery thinking comes in. Rather than being punished for students leaving, there are multiple provisions in both the current formula and in several of the proposed pieces of school choice legislation that hold districts harmless. This means school districts may continue receiving funding for students they are no longer educating. For instance, if 100 students decided to move from the Rockwood School District to the Wentzville School District, the state would still send funding to Rockwood for those students for two years while also sending money to Wentzville. That’s under normal circumstances in the current state law. The school choice bill that passed through the Missouri House of Representatives goes even further, allowing school districts to receive funding for five years after a student leaves one of its schools.

But beyond that, the third bit of slippery thinking is based on the premise that students leaving schools is akin to “defunding” them. This way of looking at the issue ignores several key facts. When students leave, yes, some portion of the money allocated for them leaves as well (after a period of time), but the district no longer has the obligation to educate them. Both the revenue and the expense leaves. Critics are only looking at one side of the ledger. By this logic, parents choosing to homeschool their own children “defunds” education; so does the student who moves. Do we think that a student “defunds” the Blue Springs school district when they move to Lee’s Summit? Should we bar families from moving? Taking that logic to its conclusion leads to absurdity.

Some people will acknowledge all that we have pointed out and yet still claim tax credit scholarships “defund” public education by reducing the amount of general revenue. This brings us to our fourth point. And we have to be clear here: the state does not spend any state tax money on a tax credit scholarship program. These programs are funded by charitable donations which receive tax credits. Tax credits, whether for development or for charitable endeavors, can lead to a reduction in general revenue for the state. That part is true, but when is the last time you’ve heard the complaints that low-income housing tax credits “defund” public education? This argument suggests that any program which could potentially impact education funding is actually “defunding” education. Money that goes to roads could instead be going to schools. Was the expansion of Medicaid a massive $9 billion effort to defund public education? Again, this is absurd.

Particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, there are important debates to be had about the shape and nature of our public school system in Missouri. These debates will benefit from clear thinking and facts, not misleading and tired rhetoric.

The post No, School Choice Does Not Defund Public Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If approved by the Lee’s Summit City Council, this project could receive an additional $18.9 million in development incentives. According to an article in the Kansas City Business Journal, that would bring the total to $74.3 million in public support, which includes $32.3 million from transportation development district (TDD) bonds, $5 million from community improvement district (CID) reimbursements, $4 million in state funding, and $1 million in city funding. That’s a lot of taxpayer money!

This project is a mixed-use sports and entertainment project and it includes volleyball courts, children’s parks, restaurants, and retail establishments. Given the uncertainty regarding when we will return to “normal” use of these types of facilities, is this really where taxpayer dollars should be going?

The timing for this project is bad, but even in different times, it would still be a bad idea. Not only do government handouts give unfair advantages to some developers over others, but research shows that incentives such as these don’t result in measurable benefits for the communities that pay for them. They can end up being a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, which is something local governments really can’t afford right now. The developers for this project have already received more than enough public dollars. Do we really need to give them more?

The post Back for More Handouts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But while population loss in roughly half of Missouri’s counties sounds terrible, there’s more going on here.

A great deal has been written about the growth of big cities across the country, but news outlets are slowly picking up on a trend that shows small and middle-sized cities gaining steam with young people. Think cities like Waco, TX and Knoxville, TN as opposed to Austin, TX and Nashville, TN—cities that aren’t necessarily state population hubs but that play an important role in their regional economies.

In fact, it seems that young people’s attraction to big cities is often overstated. Research increasingly suggests they are equally drawn to the less-costly option of smaller cities and suburban areas. Census Bureau data show that suburban growth is outpacing large city growth, with large city growth tapering off.

How is this playing out in Missouri? While most rural counties and Saint Louis City saw population declines, many medium-sized cities—Springfield, Columbia, and Lee’s Summit to name a few—have seen population increases according to the Census Bureau. Since Missouri’s total population only grew by a small percent, most of this population change is attributed to intrastate migration.

So while it is true that rural populations are dipping, it’s at least in part because of regional population consolidation in cities not far from where residents formerly lived.

And when you think about it, this migration trend makes a lot of sense. Small and medium-sized cities provide many employment, entrepreneurial, and social opportunities that may not always be available in rural areas, and these cities are often more affordable and community centered than big cities. While this trend isn’t great for rural counties—that is, the political subdivisions themselves—it is good for the people moving toward better economic and social prospects. As farms in rural areas become more productive and require fewer laborers, having access to city resources and opportunities will be all the more important for these residents.

Unfortunately, Missouri has struggled with overall population growth in recent years. During that same July 2017 to July 2018 time period mentioned above, Missouri was 29^th in the nation in population growth, with a paltry 0.3% increase. This rate is consistent with the low population growth rates that we’ve seen for years. So, while this trend of intrastate migration is positive, we can’t forget that Missouri still struggles to attract new residents.

The post Many Missourians Are Moving . . . To Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Charter schools could be coming soon to a suburb near you, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Before the Missouri Legislature expands the charter school experiment beyond urban districts in St. Louis and Kansas City, lawmakers must consider the risk it would pose to some of the strongest public school districts in the state.

Charter schools could be coming soon to a suburb near you, and that’s a great thing. As the Missouri Legislature considers making it easier to expand the charter school experiment beyond urban districts in St. Louis and Kansas City, lawmakers should think about the risk that sticking with the status quo poses to parents in public school districts across the state.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, would allow charter schools to expand into St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County and cities like Columbia, Jefferson City, Springfield and Joplin.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, would make it easier for charter schools to expand into St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Jefferson County and cities like Columbia, Jefferson City, Springfield and Joplin by allowing groups other than the local school board to sponsor them.

Proponents have long insisted that the greater choice offered by publicly funded but privately run charter schools improves students’ education options. But charter school performance data over the past 20 years hasn’t yielded consistently positive results.

Proponents point out that the greater choice offered by publicly funded but independently run charter schools improves students’ education options. And charter school performance over the past 20 years has yielded consistently positive results both for the students who attend them and for the school districts in which they operate.

Like it or not, the flight of middle-class families to the suburbs has contributed to higher performance rates for suburban public schools. It’s far from clear whether the demand exists for new education alternatives outside urban areas.

Like it or not, the flight of middle-class families to the suburbs has contributed to higher performance rates for some students in some suburban public schools and lower performance rates for others. Regardless, it’s clear that the demand exists for new education alternatives in all types of school districts.

Roeber’s bill wouldn’t add additional funding to public education nor adequately address the lack of accountability that has been among the biggest complaints about urban charter schools. Charter schools that fail to meet the same educational standards as the local public school district can still be renewed for three years under her proposal.

Roeber’s bill wouldn’t add additional funding to public education. It would simply shift control over a student’s education funding to a public charter school, if their parent so chooses. If there is no demand for charter school in a district, there won’t be one. Charter schools that fail to meet the same educational standards as the local public school district can still be renewed for three years under her proposal, if the school has the support of the local community.

Some high-profile disasters have resulted from lack of oversight and accountability for charter schools. In 2012, Missouri shut down six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis. Students consistently performed worse on state tests than those attending St. Louis Public Schools while Virginia-based Imagine reaped huge profits from a real estate business

Some high-profile disasters have resulted from charter schools opening that shouldn’t have. In 2012, Missouri shut down six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis. And they should have been shut down because students consistently performed worse on state tests than those attending St. Louis Public Schools, while Virginia-based Imagine reaped huge profits from a real estate business. Unlike some local school districts with dismally low test scores, these schools are no longer serving students.

Last month, an investigation by Kansas City’s WDAF-TV found that then-Attorney General Josh Hawley secretly settled a lawsuit with a charter school the state accused of stealing nearly $4 million in taxpayer money.

Last month, an investigation by Kansas City’s WDAF-TV found that then-Attorney General Josh Hawley secretly settled a lawsuit with a charter school the state accused of stealing nearly $4 million in taxpayer money. Of course charter schools don’t have a lock on financial fraud, but when it’s discovered they’re closed.

About half of the 30-plus charter schools that have opened in St. Louis since 2000 have been shut down for academic or financial failure. That’s hardly a success model worth emulating.

About half of the 72 existing charter schools in Missouri performed higher than their district’s average on standardized tests in both reading and math. While some have been shut down for academic or financial failure, others have achieved a success that’s worth emulating.

Nationally, the picture looks even worse. The federal government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or opened and then closed because of mismanagement or other reasons, according to the Network for Public Education advocacy group.

Nationally, the picture looks even better. Over 7,000 charter schools are now serving nearly 3.2 million public school students in all types of districts. The federal government has helped most of these schools open through a grant program that charter school founders can tap for planning and implementation. While some of these schools did not ultimately open, and others have since been closed, research has shown that the time and money spent on planning is well worth it. We now know that charter schools that start strong, stay strong, and those that start weak don’t make it.

Parents in the districts targeted by Roeber’s proposal owe it to their children to scrutinize charter schools’ performance record and the ways they can weaken their traditional public school systems.

Parents in the districts identified in Roeber’s proposal owe it to their children to demand access to charter schools so that they can find a school that fits the unique needs of their child.

For decades, lawmakers touted charter schools as a way to help students trapped in chronically low-performing districts. But a conservative political movement is afoot to weaken public school education and divert resources to alternative institutions, including private ones.

For decades, lawmakers touted charter schools as a way to help students trapped in chronically low-performing districts because they work. But a political movement is afoot to return to the public education monopoly of the last century (or protect it where it still exists). The charter school sector has created thousands of unique and innovative alternatives and parents want them for their own communities.

The performance record of charter schools is far too spotty to merit expansion beyond urban settings. Roeber’s bill proposes a potentially bad fix for something that might not even be broken.

The demand for charter schools and the long-term impact they make possible merit expansion beyond urban settings. Roeber’s bill proposes letting parents, teachers and communities across the state decide if charter schools are right for them.

The post Who’s Afraid of Charter Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plan is still in its public comment period, so I’d like to offer the questions that I have:

1. Is the district serious about reining in administrative bloat?

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education publishes administrator/student ratios for every district in the state.  For 2015, Kansas City had significantly more administrators on a per pupil basis than surrounding school districts, and even more than St. Louis. By a lot.

Those extra administrators represent serious money that could be spent in the classrooms that actually educate children.  To its credit, the plan calls for reducing administrative costs by $750,000/year, which is a good start.  But getting down to Liberty or North Kansas City levels of administrators would involve even deeper cuts than that.

2. How much smaller can the district get?

As the Star reports, the district has shrunk to only 14,228 students.  That doesn’t even put it in the top 10 districts in the state by enrollment.   Peak enrollment (in the early 1970s) was almost 73,000.

3. Students are fleeing in droves to attend public charter schools. Are we going to rethink the organization of the district in response?

As I detailed earlier this week, 41 percent of students within the boundaries of the Kansas City School District attend public charter schools, and enrollment is only growing.  There might be a not-too-distant date in the future when the vast majority of students attend public schools in Kansas City that are not operated by the Kansas City Public Schools.  Taxpayers still have an interest in these schools, and our community should play some role in their governance, but what should that role be?  New Orleans offers an interesting possible future for the city.

4. Does this plan come anywhere close to meeting the needs of the district and the children who live in it?

Probably the most striking thing that I took away from reading the report is just how little it actually wants to do.  Moving a couple of attendance boundaries, closing a high school, creating new programs within existing schools . . . these are things districts have to do all the time to adjust to student movement and community change.  Given the exodus of students, the woeful performance of schools, and the hollowing out of the tax base from tax increment financing, how can that possibly be enough?

The post Questions for the Kansas City Public Schools Master Plan appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now, this might strike you as odd when you hear over and over that charter schools are destroying public education.  Kansas City and St. Louis each have more than one-third of their students enrolled in charter schools, and yet, the traditional public school districts seem to be getting better.  How can this be?

It’s possible that either by stirring competition, more efficiently sorting students into options that serve them, or relieving pressure from school districts, charter schools are helping once struggling districts turn a corner.  Whatever the reason, it is hard to look at these numbers and see charter schools harming either district.

I should also point out that both districts started in very bad places.  In 2011, Kansas City had a graduation rate of 50 percent and St. Louis was at 54 percent.  Even with their gains, the Kansas City School District sits at only 67 percent and St. Louis at 68 percent. This puts them on par with cities like Newark, New Jersey (68 percent) and Compton, California (65 percent). They perform worse in absolute terms than neighboring cities like Little Rock (75 percent) and even Chicago (70 percent).  Inauspicious company. Clearly, there is still a long, long way to go.

Around the rest of the state, there was both good news and bad news.

The overall graduation rate in Missouri is up, from 81% in 2011 to 85.7% in 2013. That gain represents the 6^th best growth rate in the country over that time period. At the same time, though, Hispanic students in the class of 2013 graduated at a rate of 81 percent, low-income students graduated at a rate of 78 percent, and African-American students graduated at a rate of only 72 percent.

The report also broke out the performance of districts with at least 15,000 students:

• Around Kansas City, North Kansas City saw a graduation rate of 91 percent and Lee’s Summit clocked in at 94 percent.
• In greater St. Louis, Hazelwood saw an 86 percent graduation rate, Ft. Zumwalt 89 percent, Francis Howell 92 percent, Parkway 93 percent, and Rockwood 94 percent.
• Columbia had a graduation rate of 86 percent and Springfield had one of 87 percent.

All in all, a very interesting report that should inform conversations about education around the state.

The post If charter schools are ruining education in Missouri, more please! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Jackson County and Union Pacific came to an understanding on purchasing the 15.5-mile Rock Island Corridor and two smaller spurs between Kansas City and Lee’s Summit for $59.9 million earlier this year. With the $10 million federal grant, the county residents will still need to fund a $50 million purchase.

But as the map above demonstrates, those purchases still leave the county well short of functioning commuter rail lines, without additional right-of-way or agreements with freight rail companies.

It is not simply a matter of purchasing track. The city has an ongoing dispute with freight companies over how commuter trains will arrive in downtown Kansas City. Regional planners are pushing for a connection with the streetcar at River Market, but Kansas City Southern Rail (KCSR) opposes this idea because it would jeopardize operations at Rock Creek Junction. KCSR suggests a connection at Union Station, but that could raise construction costs to $1.5 billion.

Using freight rail lines to get commuter rail into downtown Kansas City is no small problem, as the city is the country’s second largest freight rail hub, and rail lines downtown are already congested. Aside from providing a source of employment, having such a large freight rail hub has positive benefits for Kansas City’s manufacturing competitiveness. It would not be economically sound for the county to jeopardize freight efficiency to heavily subsidize the commutes of fewer than 4,000 residents.

While the county does not know how it will connect commuter rail to the city center, it is clear how it will pay for it: higher taxes. The county already has a plan to implement a county-wide 1 cent sales tax. But sales taxes are already very high in Kansas City. With the city still not giving up on a more expansive streetcar network, also to be funded with sales taxes, the increased tax burden may harm the city’s competitiveness. A yes vote is certainly not guaranteed.

The county does not yet have a plan for a functioning commuter rail system, and implementation depends on a tax that voters have not yet accepted. County officials should recall this before spending $50 million on right-of-way. They should also consider that Saint Louis is implementing Bus Rapid Transit, which can easily handle 4,000 commuters a day, for under $40 million. As for Kansas City residents, they should ask why city planners waste millions of dollars planning rail plan after rail plan without the approval, or even in the face of explicit disapproval, of voters.

The post Another Push for Rail Transit in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a classic episode of The Three Stooges, the phrase “Niagara Falls” triggered a visceral reaction from Moe and Larry, which ended with Curly getting punched, slapped, and thrown to the ground. I am often reminded of that episode when I talk to policymakers and public school officials about school choice. Like Moe and Larry, they seem to have their own trigger word—privatization.

Many reject outright the idea of allowing public dollars to follow a student to the school of his or her choice—including a private school. Never mind that there is a long history of individuals using public dollars at privately operated pre-schools and universities. When faced with this proposition for K-12 education, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) said that is where he draws the line. Missouri Rep. Jeff Grisamore (R–Lee’s Summit) echoed his sentiment: “Public schools should be publicly funded and private schools should be privately funded, period.” Like the reaction to Niagara Falls, these responses are almost comical.

They are laughable because public dollars already flow to private institutions. Examples abound. Nixa Public Schools outsourced maintenance to Sodexo based out of Paris, France. St. Louis Public Schools contract with First Student, “the largest bus company in North America,” for transportation services. More than 100 public school districts contract with Chesterfield, Mo.-based Opaa! to provide food service for public school students.

Every day, school districts rely on private, for-profit providers to deliver services and supplies. Some even contract with private schools to serve their most at-risk students. Yet, for some reason there is strenuous objection to private school choice programs that allow individuals to direct their education dollars to the school of their choice.

Opponents of school choice claim that private schools are unaccountable. That is, they do not have to teach the state’s academic standards, administer state standardized exams, or comply with a host of burdensome regulations.

This argument assumes that the only way to have accountability is through government regulations. That is not the case. Accountability simply looks different in a school choice system.

When parents choose a school for their child, they essentially are entering into a contract with the school for the education of their child. In the traditional system, parents have little recourse if the school fails to meet that obligation. They can meet with teachers, principals, and central office staff. They can even take their plight to the school board. At the end of the day, however, they have very little ability to hold the school accountable for meeting their needs. They are dependent upon the school for change.

In a school choice system, however, the dynamic is very different. In fact, the arrangement between parents and schools in a school choice system closely resembles the contracts between public schools and private service providers. If Opaa! fails to provide nutritious meals, they can be fired. Similarly, if a school fails to keep a child safe or does not live up to the expectations of the parents, the school can be fired.

Choice is a powerful accountability tool.

Opponents of school choice like to throw out the word privatization as if it was a bad thing. Yet, public schools contract with private providers in nearly every aspect of our K-12 education system.

If the goal is to provide a world-class education to students, policymakers need to avoid the knee-jerk reaction against school choice and recognize that the private sector can help deliver on the promise that every child should have access to great schools.

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

The post Privatization in Education-Not as Scary as Some Think appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But hope springs eternal. So when the “big announcement” came down about the agreement on the tax cut, the response from pro-growth types could be best summarized in one word:

…Huh?

If lawmakers agree to fully fund Missouri’s public schools and rein in spending on the state’s biggest tax credit programs, Gov. Jay Nixon said Thursday he would be willing to sign a tax cut bill.

The framework of a potential deal comes after negotiations with Sen. Will Kraus, a Lee’s Summit Republican sponsoring tax cut legislation. …

According to a release issued by the governor’s office, Kraus intends to put forward legislation reducing the top individual income tax rates by .25 percent effective only after the K-12 foundation formula is fully funded and only after $200 million in revenue growth. The legislation would provide an additional .25 percent reduction effective after legislation is enacted to reduce low income housing tax credits to $110 million annually and historic preservation tax credits to $90 million annually.

If you’re completely not serious about cutting taxes to boost growth, a fraction of a percent cut in one tax might sound like pretty good politics. But in reality? It would do practically nothing in terms of substantive growth, to say nothing of the prerequisite spending that would be necessary for the cuts to take effect. (Which is to say nothing about the illusory tax credit “reform,” which stops short of adequately cutting two hugely wasteful programs and might also leave hosts of other ineffective credits untouched.)

Lots more spending for practically no tax relief? Some deal. Missourians deserve better than a gimmick like this.

The post Half Percent Tax Cut, 100 Percent Gimmick appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What has shocked people the most about the audit may be the salary and benefit package that the superintendent receives. The report noted:

The district’s superintendent at June 30, 2013, was Dr. David McGehee. His annual compensation was $258,660, which included a deferred compensation allowance of $19,716, family medical insurance of $15,377, and association expenses of $12,000. He was also provided a district vehicle for business and personal use.

Let me be clear. That is $258,660 plus those other benefits. None of this should come as a shock to readers of the Show-Me Daily blog. In 2010, we published a policy study detailing the actual pay of public school superintendents in Missouri and we noted that many receive significant perks.

One of the things we highlighted in that paper was that there seemed to be no correlation between academic performance of students and the compensation of the superintendent. From just a cursory glance, this seems to be the case here. From 2009 to 2013, the percentage of Lee’s Summit students scoring proficient or advanced in math and language arts has remained almost unchanged. Other districts, however, have improved and Lee’s Summit has dropped in the rankings. In 2009, the district was in the top 35 districts in terms of performance on the math and language arts exams. The district since has dropped to 90th and 53rd, respectively.

In approximately the same time frame, the superintendent’s salary has increased dramatically. In 2007, he was paid a salary of $170,000. In the seven years since then, he has received a 52 percent raise. According to data that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education collects, this makes him the highest-paid superintendent in the state.

The post Mirror Mirror, Who Is The Highest Paid Of Them All? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.