Last year, 20 districts statewide implemented this new system as part of the Demonstration Project. Public data on this initiative will be released soon on September 30. These districts are primarily seeking exemptions because administrators in those districts do not feel the MAP is an adequate tool to improve student performance. The test is administered to students at the end of the year, which means districts do not receive test results back until the fall of the following year.

The system adopted by these district tests students  three times per year in English/language arts and math. Missouri could also consider pairing this model with a teacher rating system (like Tennessee’s) to gauge how effective a teacher’s class and curriculum are.

The fact that many districts believe that they could develop better testing than DESE speaks volumes. The MAP needs to be timelier, and it needs to be more informative for students, parents, and teachers. My colleague, James Shuls, lamented the lack of detail in a 2018 blog post.

Even with the shortcomings of the MAP test, Missouri ought to have a uniform statewide test that allows researchers, district officials, and policymakers to learn about different education strategies and trends. If a district implements a new strategy for teaching algebra, and it sees great improvement on the MAP, another district could mimic its practices.

There will be more clarity when statistics for the Demonstration Project are released in a month. If the results are encouraging, fully transitioning to this new testing system statewide might be worth considering.

The post More Districts to Try New Standardized Testing System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

*Statistics are based on a self-compiled compilation of calendars. If snows/sick days have shifted the last day of school, they are not accounted for.

**Kairos Academies, Clarksburg C-2, Clarkton C-4, Crocker R-II, Eldon R-I, La Salle Charter School, Mark Twain R-VIII, New York R-IV, Premier Charter School, The Biome, Thornfield R-I, and Union Star R-II are not accounted for.

Skyline R-II was the first district to start summer break, on May 1. Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant will be among the final districts to go on break on May 31.

Based on the projected last day of class, if you are a St. Louis kid, you are probably getting out later than everyone else. Of the 15 traditional school districts (non-charters using a five-day school week) that end classes May 28 or later, 11 of them are in the St. Louis area. These St. Louis–area schools are Ferguson-Florissant, Hazelwood, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway, Wentzville, Ladue, Maplewood-Richmond Heights, University City, Mehlville, and Riverview Gardens.

How long do most summer breaks last in Missouri?

*Based on the projected number of days, we rounded the district to the nearest week. For example, a district with an 81-day summer would be coded as “12 weeks.”

**In this estimation we assume districts have the same first day of school as 2023-2024, and then subtracted that number by two. In 2020, Missouri mandated that Missouri public schools’ first day of school cannot be before a certain date. In 2023-2024, it was August 21st. For 2024-2025, it will be August 19th, two days earlier.

As the above figure displays, the average summer break is a little over three months for Missouri students. The shortest summer break is roughly 10 weeks, while the longest is around four months at 16 weeks. The rural districts (enrollment in parentheses) of Fairview R-XI (493), Glenwood R-VIII (218), Howell Valley R-I (209), Junction Hill C-12 (193), and Richards R-V (343) all have nearly four-month summer vacations—with May 2 as their last day of class, and August 21 as their first day of class in 2023–2024.

Interestingly, the districts that have the shortest summer breaks all tend to be St. Louis–area districts, with Ferguson-Florissant and Hazelwood having the shortest breaks. Along with these two, Clayton, Ft. Zumwalt, Parkway C-2, Wentzville, Ladue, University City, Mehlville, Riverview Gardens, Affton, Bayless, Brentwood, Francis Howell, Orchard Farm, Rockwood, and Valley Park all have estimated summer breaks under 90 days.

How do these statistics differ amongst various types of schools?

The above figures are known as a box and whisker plot. The vertical line (whiskers) represents the full range, while the box represents the middle 50 percent of responses. Any statistical outliers are noted as dots, the horizontal line is the median, and the “x” is the mean.

As shown, rural schools on average have much longer summer breaks than their suburban and city counterparts. Additionally, most of the longest breaks in the state are rural—of the 50 longest summer breaks in the state, 47 of them are rural districts. While this may be reflective of the bygone days when most rural children worked on farms, Institute analysts have conducted research that found rural high school students may have fewer opportunities and lower rate of college readiness than their suburban counterparts.

Another important takeaway from these figures is the difference in break length between charters and traditional schools. Charter schools have an average (mean) summer break of 84 days, versus 92 for four-day school week districts and 94 days for traditional five-day school week districts. In Missouri, charter schools serve high proportions of disadvantaged students and shorter breaks may be a good use of charter school flexibility.

Do longer summers hurt students? Summer learning loss is a well-documented phenomenon. However, there are debates about the actual extent of achievement loss. Regardless, it is interesting to see the variability across the state and to consider if there could be academic implications.

The post When Do Summer Breaks Start for School Districts Across Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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.

I was reminded of this piece last week when I read an interesting story by Dale Singer of St. Louis Public Radio, “Outsourcing substitute teachers deemed a success.” Singer shares how several Saint Louis area school districts, including Parkway, Normandy, and Maplewood Richmond Heights, now use Kelly Educational Staffing to find substitutes. 

This arrangement of privatized substitute services has been beneficial for everyone. In Normandy, for example, a district that has had its fair share of trouble over the past few years, the district has struggled to fill classrooms when the teacher is absent. According to Singer, “the rate of filling classrooms with substitutes had been in the 55-60 percent range; that figure rose to around 90 percent” with Kelly Educational Staffing.  The arrangement also means school districts can cut down on administrative costs in the central office.

The system is even great for retired public school teachers who wish to teach. In Missouri, a retired teacher can only work 550 hours for a school district while collecting their pension benefits. When substitute teachers are outsourced to Kelly, they no longer work for the school district. They work for Kelly Educational Staffing. This means they can work more and still draw their pension.

This is just another example of how privatization can be a good thing. As I wrote in my piece two years ago,

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.

The post Privatization: Still a Good Thing in Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hickman Mills “No Tax Increase” Bond: PASSED

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, a quick primer on property taxes. Homes are assessed at 19% of their market value. So, for example, a school levy rate of $3.00 per $100 of assessed value applied to a house with a market value of $100,000 would mean that person pays $570 per year in tax.  An increase of 50 cents per $100 in assessed value would mean paying an additional $95 per year.

As a reference point, the statewide average millage rate is $3.69 per $100 in assessed value, and the state calculates “local effort,” the amount local districts are expected to contribute before the state adds its funds, at $3.43 per $100 of assessed value.

Sometimes tax levy increases are necessary.  For districts that are growing and need to build new school buildings, or districts that operate efficiently but are facing aging infrastructure, modest increases to the tax levy are perfectly appropriate.

That said, there are reasons to be skeptical. First, many school districts are not currently operating as efficiently as they could be. By comparing teacher/student ratios and administrator/student ratios, we see that many schools do more with less.  The same is true with the average salaries for those positions—there is serious variation across districts (even in what seem to be similar labor markets) in how much teachers and administrators get paid. Also, some districts ask for levy increases to build new buildings when it is clear that their enrollment is on the decline.  They should be figuring out how best to use what they already have.

We should also always be on the lookout for the pernicious effect of TIF deals that erode the tax base of school districts.  Kansas City and St. Louis are chronic abusers of this system, which diverts tax revenue that should go to schools back into the pockets of developers, but TIF projects take place all over the state.  If a district has hollowed out its tax base through TIF, why should ordinary citizens have to pick up the slack through increased property taxes?

To better inform voters, we have put together a series of information sheets on the proposed mill levy increases that are on the ballot on April 5. We provide data on what the mill levy means for homeowners in terms of the increased taxes they will be paying every year.  We also provide data, drawn from publically available spreadsheets on DESE’s website, on the school district and the school districts that surround it so taxpayers can compare and contrast how well or how poorly the district is being managed.  

Links to each of the info sheets are below.

Update, March 23: We now have an info sheet for the Maplewood-Richmond Heights school district.

The post Tax Levy Increases by the Numbers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I wanted to take a moment to put this tax increase into perspective. According to data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the average tax rate ceiling for school districts in Missouri was $3.70 per $100 of assessed valuation in 2015. Regionally, however, property tax rates are considerably higher. The average tax rate for Saint Louis County school districts is $4.528. On top of that, county residents pay an additional $1.2609 per $100 of assessed valuation for the special school district. This brings the county average up to $5.788.

The table that follows shows how Saint Louis’ school property tax rate would stack up to Saint Louis County school districts. For county districts, I combine both district and special school district rates.

As has been written on this blog before, Saint Louis could do other proactive things to address the budget crisis, such as selling vacant school buildings. And as Joseph Miller has pointed out, the city could help the district out a little by ending its flagrant TIF and tax abatement policies.  Nevertheless, it is certainly within the right of the school district to seek a property tax increase. If this one passes, Saint Louis will still have the lowest school taxes in the area. 

The post Should Saint Louis Raise Property Taxes for Public Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The high school was surrounded by barbed wire. Doors with broken locks were chained shut or jammed with broom sticks. Science labs had no running water. Gangs used school walls for graffiti.

That was when Superintendent Linda Henke started at the district. Now, 12 years later, as she retires, the district is much better off. It has made big strides academically, with its students outperforming the state average in Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test scores. The buildings look more inviting.

According to the Post-Dispatch, Henke had to make tough decisions to improve the district. She terminated 30 teachers, a no small feat given how hard it can be to fire a teacher in Missouri, and the teachers’ union sued the district. The Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District also successfully passed a tax levy increase in 2010 during the midst of a recession.

But the best sign of the district’s success is that more area parents are opting to send their children to public schools. Now, 75 percent of neighborhood children are enrolled in the district. Though some of this change is due to the recession and parents no longer able to afford private school tuition, most of this change is likely attributable to the positive changes made at the district.  Parents are capable of recognizing educational success, and many will, if able, leave a failing district by moving or finding a better educational alternative.

But for every success story like that at Maplewood-Richmond Heights, there are districts that are falling behind with many parents unable to afford a better option. Instead of relegating students to a failing district for who knows how long, wouldn’t it be better if districts were held accountable for failure and rewarded for success?

One way to do this would be to allow parents to choose what school (and what district) their child attends, with the child taking his or her per-pupil funding to the chosen school. That way, successful districts would attract more students (and funding), while failing districts would have to compete for students and funding, or risk being closed. If competition for students can work for Maplewood, why can’t it work for the rest of the state?

The post Successfully Competing For Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is a tale of two neighborhoods. Both Saint Louis-area neighborhoods are impressive and outwardly they look like twins. Hampton Park and Lake Forest sit on opposite sides of Hanley Road between Clayton Road and Highway 40, and they both boast large, stately homes. They are equidistant from the region’s central business districts. With two exceptions, they have the same level and quality of public services and the same tax rates. With so many similarities, you might assume property values would be the same. But you would be wrong.

Hampton Park and Lake Forest illustrate how different people finding different solutions to their housing and educational needs can have a substantial impact on housing prices.

The two exceptions noted above are the neighborhood school districts and the differing tax rates they impose. Both neighborhoods are subdivisions of Richmond Heights, but Lake Forest — which is located west of Hanley — is part of Clayton School District. In 2010, Clayton was the highest performing district in Missouri according to MAP scores. Over the past 10 years, residents have paid an average tax rate of $3.44 per $100 of assessed valuation. East of Hanley, Hampton Park is part of Maplewood-Richmond Heights (MRH) school district. In 2010, the state ranked MRH’s performance 315th out of 556 districts, making it an average district. Over the past decade, residents paid an average tax rate of $4.48.

Homes in Lake Forest are located in a higher performing school district and have lower tax rates than those across the street in Hampton Park. Do homebuyers react accordingly, and by how much?

Of course homebuyers adjust. According to a study of assessed valuations in the two neighborhoods, the difference between the prices paid for a theoretical house of the same square footage and lot size in the two neighborhoods is $109,000, or a little more than 10 percent. Homebuyers in Lake Forest are willing to pay approximately $109,000 more to live in a higher-performing school district with lower tax rates. Conversely, homebuyers in Hampton Park are paying $109,000 less to live in a more average school district with higher tax rates. Economists refer to this kind of difference as capitalization. It is the process that incorporates tax rates and other variables into the value of a piece of property.

Capitalization is a complex process, especially in regions that have as many taxing districts as Saint Louis. Prospective homebuyers typically take the time to research local school quality and tax rates, but they usually stop short of researching fire districts. Although homebuyers may not investigate them, the insurance industry certainly has. A home located in an area with a poor quality fire district will have higher insurance rates, and those higher rates will be translated into lower home prices. The combined wisdom of thousands of individual decisions is sorted into a price that is readily understood by everyone.

Capitalization works in both directions, often simultaneously. A great school district will lead to higher property prices, while the high tax rates used to fund those good schools will lower the price. The low crime rates of the outer suburbs will increase prices, while the higher commuting costs will lower prices. As for Lake Forest, the lower tax rates leads to higher home prices, and this may result in the same final tax bill as higher rates on less valuable property.

The higher tax rates and lower ranking school district do not automatically do economic harm to the residents of Hampton Park. A Hampton Park purchaser may intend to send their children to private or parochial schools and might be using the $109,000 discount to do just that. This appears to be the case for many residents, as the MHR school district offers no school bus service within Hampton Park. In effect, the $109,000 price difference can be viewed as a voucher toward the cost of private education, the payment of future (higher) taxes, or both.

The larger point is that with the variety of different cities, school districts, etc. that we have in Saint Louis County, there is an abundance of choices, making it more likely that everyone can find a suitable combination of taxes and services. Homeowners vote with their feet — by leaving cities that increase taxes too much or fail to offer quality services. This pressures cities to be efficient. That pressure and competition is reflected in property values, and that benefits all of us.

Gaudiet emptor — Let the buyer rejoice!

The post A $ 109,000 School “Voucher”: A Story of Tax Rates and School Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unwanted chickens will be kept to a minimum if the birds go to people who seek them out of their own volition. Foisting chickens on reluctant citizens will result in abandoned animals. With that in mind, I’m not in favor of the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District’s plan to encourage chicken ownership. The district has a goal of convincing 50 families to keep chickens. I’m afraid that if it offers too much encouragement, people who aren’t so excited about chickens are going to give in and adopt them, only to abandon them later. A better goal would be to provide information about chickens to anyone who’s interested, without setting a lower bound for the number of chicken owners.

The district’s on-site chicken coop is a good idea; children can learn a lot about animal life cycles from watching chickens. When I was in elementary school, individual classrooms raised chicks. Building one coop for the whole school might allow for more efficient maintenance, and classes could come one at a time to observe the birds. It also could be more practical to keep chickens on a permanent basis than to order new chicks each year and give them away when school’s out.

The post The Urban Chicken Debate Continues appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Riternour School District also had a sizable tax cut this year. They deserve great credit for that, as it does not appear they were all that close to their cap — but they cut the rates substantially, nonetheless. The people of South County will benefit from a nice rate cut in Bayless School District as well. Now, if Bayless and Hancock Place school districts would just merge, we would be making some real progress for the taxpayers. But good for the Bayless School Board anyway! Finally, I am pleased to say that the University City Library Board, on which this author is priviledged to serve, has cut its 2007 tax rate, as well.

Senator Gibbons deserves tremendous credit for bringing pressure to bear on governmental bodies throughout Missouri, getting them to roll back their rates even when they are not legally required to do so. In my personal opinion, municipalities, school districts, etc., will greatly benefit from following both the letter and the spirit of the law. When government bodies roll back rates when assessments go up, whether or not they are required to do so, taxpayers will more likely trust them with new tax money if and when tax increases are truly needed by those districts.

The post More Tax Rates in St. Louis County Rolled Back … appeared first on Show-Me Institute.