As a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal reports, high-tax states continue to bleed residents and income. Between 2022 and 2023, California lost a net $11.9 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI), New York $9.9 billion, and Illinois $6 billion. Higher earners with income over $200,000 drove much of this exodus. In Massachusetts, they accounted for 70% of outflows, doubling the 2019 share.

Meanwhile, no-income-tax states saw the largest gains. Florida added $20.6 billion in AGI, Texas $5.5 billion, and Tennessee $2.8 billion. Even non-income tax states with more frigid climes saw significant inflows, including Wyoming and South Dakota. In short, states without income taxes dominated the top destinations for both people and wealth.

Missouri, with its current 4.7% top individual income tax rate, sits in the middle of the pack. While we are not a major loser like California or New York, we are far from the magnet status of Florida or Tennessee. Drawing upon IRS migration data, past Show-Me Institute reports have shown that Missouri has consistently lost more people and more income than it gained. This has been particularly the case among working-age and higher-earning households seeking better economic climates.

These national migration patterns emerge at a pivotal moment for Missouri. State lawmakers recently approved HJRs 173 and 174, a proposed constitutional amendment backed by Governor Mike Kehoe that would ask voters to authorize the gradual phaseout of the state’s individual income tax. If approved, the general assembly would begin reducing the tax as revenues grow and would have the authority to speed up the process while modernizing Missouri’s outdated sales tax code.

Eliminating the income tax would align Missouri with proven winners in the migration data, making our state far more attractive to high earners, businesses, and young professionals—key drivers of growth. Moreover, we sit right next door to Illinois, which, while losing top earners at a breakneck pace, is also ranked the least friendly state for middle-class earners according to one report.

The pattern is clear. People and capital continue to flow to states with lower tax burdens and pro-growth policies. Missouri has the chance to join those states. By modernizing our tax code now, we can shut off the outflow of the past and build a more prosperous future.

The post Missouri’s Opportunity to Attract Talent: Latest IRS Data on “Voting with Their Feet” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In New York, the Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act took effect on June 11. Within a week, average listed rents jumped 15 percent, from $4,750 to $5,500. Many landlords, faced with absorbing fees once paid by tenants, simply raised rents to cover the difference. Others introduced vague “management” or “technology” fees—charges that resemble the old broker fees in everything but name. At the same time, the number of apartment listings fell, suggesting some landlords were withholding inventory to preserve pricing power.

This cost-shifting dynamic isn’t unique to New York. In Kansas City, for instance, landlords must pay a $20-per-unit annual inspection fee—and are legally barred from passing it on to tenants. Yet few believe it doesn’t show up in the rent. As with most expenses in housing, the end user ultimately picks up the tab.

Even if renters are no longer writing separate checks to brokers or city departments, they’ll still bear the cost indirectly. Landlords operate in competitive markets and adjust pricing in response to total expenses, no matter how those costs are labeled. The illusion of savings may please voters, but it won’t lower rents.

Such policies also obscure the true cost of housing. When fees are baked into rent rather than itemized, it’s harder for renters to assess value. And as seen in New York, shifting fee obligations may reduce supply if landlords delay listings or forgo using brokers entirely, which limits choice for renters.

Some argue landlords are better positioned to negotiate broker fees, or that renters shouldn’t face steep upfront costs. That may be true in theory. But it assumes landlords won’t pass on those costs—an assumption contradicted by New York’s immediate market response.

If the goal is housing affordability, policymakers should focus on fundamentals: zoning reform, faster permitting, and reducing regulation to increase supply. Reassigning fees won’t create more apartments. But it can inflate rents.

Missourians—and Massachusetts residents—should be skeptical of promises to cut costs by simply shifting who pays them. As Kansas City and now New York have shown, policies that ignore how markets behave rarely deliver the relief they promise.

The post Massachusetts Joins NYC and KC in Shifting Fees to Landlords appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The law technically prohibits cities and counties from banning the use of any fuel source, but natural gas has been a target nationwide for cities attempting to reduce fossil fuel usage. Cities including Denver, Seattle, and 42 municipalities in California have banned natural gas for various usages in new construction. Brookline, Massachusetts, voted to ban natural gas usage in new construction as well, although this was later struck down as violating state law. The purpose of these laws is to replace natural gas with electricity, although this is complicated by the fact that electricity generation often requires fossil fuels.

Outlawing natural gas comes at a great cost. Heating with electricity is twice as expensive as heating with natural gas. Roughly half of Missouri homes use natural gas for heating and heating is usually a households’ largest energy expense, so banning natural gas usage is an expensive proposition. While no city in Missouri has enacted such a ban, several cities do have their own environmental goals, so a future attempt to ban natural gas usage was conceivable.

Ultimately, localities may enact policies on matters where the state has not spoken clearly. But now that the state has spoken clearly to prohibit local natural gas bans, Missourians won’t be subject to natural gas bans.

The post Missouri Bans Natural Gas Bans appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The study, from the Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts, concludes that completely eliminating occupational licensing would result in revenue gains for Missouri. The key is that there would be more tax revenue generated from additional people earning income than is currently generated in licensing fees. According to the study, allowing citizens to work without licensing restrictions would generate an additional $328 million in state and local tax revenue in Missouri. While Missouri would lose $150 million in fees collected from licensure, revenues would increase by about $178 million. Basically, complete licensing reform would more than “pay for itself” in Missouri (as well as 28 other states listed in the study).

Though this study examines the complete repeal of all licensing, no one has yet proposed that in Missouri. However, it’s interesting to think of licensing reform through the often-overlooked lens of public finance. Government officials seem to be hesitant to eliminate a source of revenue, but this study suggests an elimination of fee revenue may not reduce total revenues.

The licensing reciprocity bills proposed in the Missouri Legislature are much more modest than the reforms suggested in this study, but they present exciting economic opportunities for Missourians. This study adds to the overwhelming evidence that it’s time to rethink Missouri’s occupational licensing.  

The post Occupational Licensing Reform Could Save the State Money appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As a researcher, I can’t stress enough that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I’m still struck by the following graphic.

This graphic was created by the Urban Institute for their 2015 report, Breaking the Curve: Promises and Pitfalls of Using NAEP Data to Assess the State Role in Student Achievement. The states in the bottom left quadrant are those that both performed in the bottom half of all states on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2013, and also saw their NAEP scores decline between 2003 and 2013, after controlling for student demographics. And the states in this bottom left quadrant are mostly states with little or no school choice. The states in orange had no charter schools in 2013, and those in blue only allowed charter schools as punishment for low performance. Oklahoma gave up using charters as a last resort for low-performing districts in 2015, but Missouri has not. Iowa and Wyoming had fewer than 400 students in charter schools in 2013. By contrast, Florida and Texas had over 200,000 students enrolled in charter schools that same year. Pennsylvania had almost 120,000 charter school students and New Jersey and Massachusetts had about 30,000 each.

If school choice killed public education, this graphic would look a lot different. I’m perplexed that the states in the bottom left quadrant, including Missouri, think that taking a strong stance against school choice is a winning strategy.

The post States with School Choice Reap the Benefits appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A recent study in Education Next by Daniel Hamlin and Paul Peterson of Harvard University shows that Missouri’s state assessments have gotten easier. In fact, Missouri was the only state in the nation to decrease the difficulty of state assessments from 2009 to 2017. As recently as 2009, Missouri’s state tests were given a grade of “A” by the publication and were ranked second in the nation, behind only Massachusetts. This meant we set a high bar for achieving proficiency. Since then, we’ve dramatically lowered our standards. Missouri’s assessments now receive a letter grade of “C” and rank us 48^th in the nation.

 Keep in mind that test scores are a significant component of the score a school district receives on the state’s Annual Performance Report (APR). Normandy has made substantial improvement on the APR. The district scored just 7.1% in 2014. When the state board voted to reaccredit the district, the APR score was 62.5%. That score was just barely above the 60% threshold for provisional accreditation and was the district’s first year scoring in that range. At the time, 8.7 percent of the district’s 8th-graders scored proficient or advanced on the state’s easier assessment.

We shouldn’t dismiss the progress the Normandy Schools Collaborative has made. Under the steady leadership of Superintendent Charles Pearson and the oversight of the state, the district is clearly heading in the right direction. The question is whether the state’s easier assessments may have given the school district the extra 2.5 percentage points on the APR that put the district into the provisional accreditation range. More importantly, would the state board of education still have voted to reaccredit the school district if the members had known some portion of the district’s academic gains were illusory?

We won’t know the answer to that question for some time. Right now, the state board does not have a quorum as the five members who voted to fire the commissioner have been withdrawn. This means the board can take no action on this or any other issue. It also means that students in Normandy and other provisionally accredited school districts will be required to return to their home school districts next year. Students who transferred to Clayton, Kirkwood, and other high-performing school districts will be forced to go back to the schools they sought to escape. 

When the vacant state board seats are finally filled and the board reconvenes, they will have a lot of work to catch up on—including hiring a new education commissioner—so it will be easy for the members to overlook the situation in Normandy. That would be an injustice to the students there. At the very least, the board should thoroughly investigate the extent to which easier tests cost them the opportunity for a better education.

The post Did Easier Tests Cost Normandy Students the Right to Transfer? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In his First Thanksgiving 1621, we see prosperous, black-clad Pilgrims in the company of new-found friends – bare-chested Indians in feathered war bonnets (one of several historical inaccuracies). The “thanks” here are for a bountiful harvest and the early realization of America as a land of milk and honey.

But how could it have been so easy for the settlers to carve a life out of the wildness in a cold and unknown land far from home?  Simple answer: It wasn’t, as most people instinctively recognize.

Out of 102 passengers on the Mayflower who arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December of 1620, 51, or exactly half, died from malnutrition or disease within a few months. The bereaved survivors must have been painfully aware of the precariousness of their own existence. They included William Bradford, the author of the classic Of Plymouth Plantation, who went on to become governor of the colony for many years. Gravely ill, his young wife, Dorothy May, either fell or threw herself to her death as the Mayflower lay at anchor in Cape Cod.

The Pilgrims did not build on a record of success.  As Donna Curtin, the executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum points out, “Many other colonies (in the Americas) had failed terribly.” Set up in 1607, the original English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, had all but collapsed three years later – with 80-90 percent of its inhabitants lost to starvation and disease. In Ms. Curtin’s words, “They had murder, cannibalism, you name it – horrific, brutal conditions.”  No fewer than 10 colonies set up before Jamestown by the Spanish and French had also ended in disaster.

The Pilgrim leaders were well aware of this string of failures, as we know from Bradford’s journal. Coming with intact families and a strong sense of community, the Pilgrims bore more than a passing resemblance to the ancient Jews who sojourned in Egypt before going on to find their new home. Having fled religious persecution in England, the Pilgrims spent a dozen years in the Netherlands before fresh troubles there prompted many of their congregation to pin their hopes on the new world.

However, within three years of their landing, Pilgrims faced major problems of their own.   Bradford wrote:  “Famine began to pinch them [the Pilgrims] sore.”

The investors who paid their passage hoped to get an adequate payback on their investment in the founding company.  Fearing that would not be possible if people were free to farm their own land, they insisted upon “a common course and conditions” over the first seven years – under which there were no individual property rights and each member was entitled an equal share of total output.

Bradford recognized the demoralizing aspect of this arrangement. The industrious would subsidize the slackers; the most productive would get no more “in the division of the victuals and clothes” than the least productive. Instead of fostering harmony, communal property led to laziness, envy, thievery, poverty, and social dysfunction – just as it would in the 20^th Century through the spread of communism.

In 1623, Bradford and other leaders assigned to every family “a parcel of land” for its own use. With private property came economic freedom and individual initiative. “This had a very good result,” Bradford wrote, “for it made all hands very industrious” – leading to a big increase in corn production and far greater “contentment” for the community as a whole.

That’s how private property and economic freedom saved the Pilgrims. Happy Thanksgiving!

The post A Thanksgiving Reflection: How Private Property and Economic Freedom Saved the Pilgrims appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The statistic comes from a new report released by The College Board last week. According to the report, 21.9 percent of high school graduates nationwide pass an AP test. Massachusetts had the highest percentage (31.0 percent), while Mississippi had the lowest (5.9 percent).

So how can Missouri policymakers help more students take advantage of AP courses?

A good first step would be to increase enrollment in AP classes through course access programs. Show-Me Institute analysts have written about the need for course access in Missouri for some time now, and currently bills are making their way through the legislature that would allow students to take AP courses (either online or at an approved off-site location) when those courses are not offered at their high schools.

Recently, we updated our numbers and found that 284 out of 448 school districts with high schools did not have a single student enrolled in an AP course during the 2015–2016 school year.

It is time to expand opportunities for our high schoolers to take advanced courses and prepare them to better compete in college with students from other states. 

The post Missouri Students Need Access to Advanced Coursework appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

In my remarks today, I hope to convince you of three things. First, the idea of the Common Core was noble, but misguided. Second, the Common Core State Standards will not significantly improve student achievement. And finally, the federal government created the controversy we have seen surrounding the Common Core over the past few years.

A Noble but Misguided Goal

The idea behind the Common Core is quite simple. Schools need standards because standards allow teachers to align the curriculum and allow teachers to see what they are to cover in each grade. I have been told many times that prior to schools adopting learning standards, it was not uncommon for students in the same grade in the same school to have radically different experiences depending on the teachers they had. Standards help alleviate that problem.

Following the infamous “A Nation at Risk Report” report of 1983, the standards movement was launched. This Reagan-administration report used alarming language to describe the nation’s education system. The authors of the report wrote:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

The report fueled a desire to improve the quality of our education system. State officials wanted to keep a watchful eye on how schools were performing. To do that they needed tests, and to have tests, they needed standards on which to base them.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, states began creating their own standards-based accountability systems. By 2000, 39 states had accountability systems in place. After the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001, the remaining states were forced to follow suit. As a result, by the mid-2000s we had 50 different state standards and 50 different accountability systems.

These individual state standards created a problem. Students from families that moved from one state to another could miss entire topics if they were covered in one grade in one state and in a different grade in another. And, very importantly, the different tests did not allow us to compare one state to another because the accountability systems were different. In a state with very low standards a student might score “proficient,” but if he were in a state with very high standards he might score “basic.”

In reality, these were not problems created by having 50 state standards. They were problems that have always existed, and in many regards still exist. To be honest, these problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. I mean, would you go through all of the effort that the Common Core designers went through just to improve transparency across states? I wouldn’t, especially when we have the National Assessment of Educational progress, known as the nation’s report card, which already allows us to compare one state to another. The most valid reason to support the Common Core comes from the thought that these standards could improve student achievement for all students. This is where the supporters for Common Core were misguided. This is where the logic for Common Core falters, and this is what brings me to my second point: that Common Core will not improve educational outcomes for students.

Common Core Will Not Improve Educational Outcomes

Let me ask: How might a system of new standards improve educational outcomes for all students? As far as I can tell, there are three options:

• The standards could better align the curriculum.
• The standards could be more rigorous.
• Or, the standards could create a broader platform for collaboration.

Let’s examine each of these.

The standards could better align the curriculum

Remember, states have already developed standards and aligned curricula. We’d have to believe that the Common Core has somehow come up with a better way to do these things—that they have discovered the special sauce or that the designers have figured out the right progression of learning. Something tells me that is not the case. While the quality of education research is improving, there is simply not enough evidence to know if we should teach fractions in third grade or fourth, or whether we should introduce money in kindergarten or first grade. I recently sat on a committee to rewrite Missouri’s state standards. I can tell you, while the process is informed by research, it often comes down to educated guessing. The individuals making these guesses are indeed educated, but in the end, many of these decisions are completely subjective.

So what is the second option?

The standards could be simply be more rigorous

They could raise the level of expectations for students. After all, students rise to the level of expectation, don’t they? If this were true, we would expect students in states that previously had rigorous standards to perform better than students in states with weaker standards. In a study for the Brookings Institution, Tom Loveless examined this very issue. He found no relationship between the rigor of state standards and student performance on the NAEP. None. Another thing to consider is that ratings of the Common Core Standards by the Fordham Foundation, a group that has been very supportive of the effort, do not place Common Core at the top of the standards list. They are among the best according to Fordham, but in Math and Language arts, other standards were rated higher. If we believe that rigor or the quality of standards matter, then it puzzles me why supporters of national standards would be so willing to go to bat for Common Core. Why not simply adopt the superior Massachusetts standards?

The Common Core will not improve student achievement by better aligning curriculum, nor can we improve student learning simply by being more rigorous. What’s left?

A system of national standards could create a broader platform for collaboration

Before Common Core, textbook companies often designed curricula for more populous states like California and Texas. As a result, states found it difficult to get textbooks that aligned with their individual standards. Common Core helps alleviate this problem. Moreover, it allows teachers throughout the country to collaborate on lessons related to the standards. While this sounds great, planning on a substantial benefit from collaboration is misguided. If it were true that more opportunities for collaboration led to success, then we would expect to see more populous states—those that drive textbook production—to have an advantage. Not only would they have textbooks tailored to their curricula, but with a larger number of teachers, they would have greater opportunities for collaboration. Yet, we don’t see a California or Texas advantage.

In the face of the evidence, there is simply no logical model that can explain how a set of standards that simply tells teachers what to teach will improve student learning. At least not today.

To be clear: Standards are important, and evidence does show that the standards-based accountability movement has led to modest learning gains for students. It seems, however, that the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Schools have already aligned curricula, and we have already begun focusing on student outcomes. New standards may have some impact on the margins, but by themselves they cannot substantially improve student achievement.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive indictment of Common Core. I don’t believe Common Core will ruin our education system. I don’t believe it is some grand conspiracy to dumb down America. I simply believe it is bad policy.

But if Common Core is innocuous, then why are we devoting so much time to it? We are having this conversation today because promoters of Common Core oversold, and because the federal government overstepped. As is often the case, the actions of the federal government came with unintended consequences.

The Federal Government Created the Common Core Controversy

Common Core did not begin as a federal initiative. I hesitate to call this a “state-led” initiative, and it certainly wasn’t a grass roots initiative. It was instigated by the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. These two trade organizations began the process late in George W. Bush’s administration, but the idea of national standards goes back even further, to his father’s administration. Early on in the development of the Common Core standards, some thought that the standards would be adopted by a handful of states; it was hoped that other states would adopt them voluntarily over time. That changed with federal involvement.

In 2009, President Obama launched his Race to the Top initiative, a competitive grant program that was part of the stimulus plan. States could compete for $4.35 billion dollars in prize money by proposing a series of reforms. This came at a time when states were feeling the pressure of the recession and could ill afford to pass up an opportunity for additional federal funding. One of the reforms supported in Race to the Top was the adoption of learning standards that were common to a majority of states—what would become Common Core.

As part of the first round of the Race to the Top process, states had to submit their applications (including a commitment to the Common Core standards) by January 19, 2010. The second round was June 1. But the final draft of the standards was not even released until June of 2010. In other words, the federal government encouraged states to commit to common standards before those standards were even finalized. Still, states jumped at the opportunity. By 2013, 45 states had adopted the standards. President Obama took credit for this in his State of the Union address.

At the same time, the Obama administration doubled down on support of Common Core by offering to waive certain No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements to states that adopted Common Core. Schools and states were finding it increasingly difficult to comply with various aspects of NCLB; that is, they had failed to meet the mandated 100 percent proficiency marks. States could avoid penalties by promoting education reform policies championed by the administration, one of which was common standards.

Whether you support federal involvement or not, it is difficult to deny that the actions of the U.S. Department of Education caused or at least contributed to the controversy surrounding Common Core. What might have been a coalition of states that grew and developed over time was catapulted into the national stage as a new and radical reform that many states adopted, if not against their will, then at least under duress.

Conclusion

While the motivation behind the Common Core standards was good, the outcomes—at least in terms of liberty—are not. Common Core moves control of one of the most important aspects of education—what students learn—further from students and parents, and it concentrates power at the federal level. As Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” The Common Core standards reduce individual liberty and academic freedom for states, teachers, and students. They nullify the great advantage of individual states—the ability to act as laboratories that allow us to evaluate different systems to see what works best—in favor of a monolithic approach that stifles innovation. Ultimately, the Common Core movement is an expression of the flawed mindset that we can mandate and orchestrate improved student achievement through centralized control. 

The post A Well Intentioned Disaster: A Presentation on the Merits of Common Core State Standards appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s also why I do a facepalm when someone compares Missouri’s teacher salaries to the average salaries in other states.

In a recent press release promoting a new study on teacher salaries, Bruce Moe, executive director of the Missouri State Teacher’s Association, said, “Missouri ranks 42nd nationwide for average classroom teacher pay. That translates to $8,896 less than the national average.”

Let’s do a little test. Here is a cost-of-living map from the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC). It provides an index for each state. Missouri’s cost of living in the 3rd quarter of 2015 was just 91.2% of the national average. Using just this information, what states would you bet have the highest teacher salaries?

Did you guess New York, Washington D.C., or California? Give yourself a gold star!

According to the Digest of Education Statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics (Table 211.60), the average teacher salary in each of these places was over $70,000. Massachusetts and New Jersey also have average salaries higher than $70,000, but each of these places has a cost-of-living that is much higher than the national average (including 149.3% of the national average in D.C.!).

According to MERIC, “Missouri had the 11th-lowest cost of living in the United States for the third quarter of 2015.” We should expect the average teacher salary in Missouri to be below the national average, because the cost-of-living in Missouri is below the national average.

Just as teachers in Saint Louis and Kansas City make more than teachers in Mt. Vernon and Niangua, teachers in New York and California make more, on average, than teachers in Missouri. This is not a bad thing—it simply reflects that it costs a lot less to live here. Not taking that into account yields wildly skewed results, and the MSTA should know better.

The post Comparing Teacher Pay by State Offers Heat, but Little Light appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

More than three-quarters of Missouri’s class of 2015 took the ACT, an admissions test that is also designed to tell whether students have a strong likelihood (a 75 percent chance) of earning a “C” or higher in introductory college courses in four subject areas. For English, the minimum required score to be deemed “college-ready” is 18, for math it is 22, for reading 22, and for science 23 (all out of 36).

Only 30 percent of students scored college-ready in all four tests. In other words, seven out of ten were judged to be unprepared for college in one or more of the four areas. While a high of 71 percent of students scored college-ready in English, the scores dropped sharply in the other subjects: 51 percent in reading, 44 percent in math, and 42 percent in science.

Even more troubling is the performance of African-American students. Only 6 percent of African-American students scored college-ready in all four tests. On the individual tests, 37 percent of African-American students scored college-ready in English, 19 percent in reading, 13 percent in math, and 12 percent in science.

On advanced placement (AP) exams—which indicate how many students are likely not only to pass, but to excel in different subject areas—the state did even worse. Here the gold standard is a score of 3 or better on a 1-to-5 scale, enabling high-scoring students to obtain advance credit for courses such as calculus and physics prior to their arrival at college.

Though class-wide numbers are still emerging, it is already clear that Missouri, once again, has under-performed all but a handful of other states in AP tests. This is the same story as last year, when only 9.5 percent of Missouri graduates passed at least one AP exam. In Massachusetts—the highest performing state—28 percent of graduating students, or three times as many as in Missouri, passed one or more of the tests of college-level proficiency in challenging subjects.

Out of approximately 20,000 African-American high school juniors and seniors in public schools in Missouri last year, only 55 black students met the standard in AP English literature, 44 did so in U.S. history, 24 in calculus, 8 in chemistry, 7 in physics, and 6 in computer science. In total, that is just seven of every thousand students who are already working at a college level in one or more of these subjects while still in high school.

The numbers tell an alarming story. First, our schools are underperforming across the state. Preparing only 30% of students for college-level work isn’t going to work. Second, our schools’ poor performance is particularly egregious for black students.

We need to upgrade our education system almost everywhere, but a good start would be providing choice for African-American students trapped in the worst public schools. A school system that empowered parents rather than bureaucrats to make the most important decisions in children’s lives would maximize the likelihood of reversing these troubling statistics.

The post All Too Many Missouri Students Are College Bound, but Primed for Failure appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a biennial assessment of fourth-grade and eighth-grade students across the country in English and math proficiency. The good news from the 2015 scores is that Missouri did about as well (or poorly) as in 2013. But that is where the good news ends.

I will focus on the math scores, because there is ample evidence that how students do on the math component of the test is a good indicator of future economic success. That is, states with low math scores also tend to be states that have poor records when it comes to economic growth. And Missouri is not an economic powerhouse by any stretch of the statistical imagination.

So how did Missouri students do in math this time around? Thirty-eight percent of fourth-graders scored at the proficient level. If my own math is correct here, that means 62 percent scored at levels less than proficient. That put Missouri at 29th compared to other states. Eighth-graders did slightly worse: only 31 percent scored at or above the proficient level. That score put Missouri at 32nd. (For perspective, more than 50 percent of fourth- and eighth-grade students in Massachusetts scored above at or above the proficient level in math.) And as the recent post by James Shuls) points out, adjusting for state demographics does not improve the outcome.

Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) notes that these current rankings are no worse (eighth-grade math) and an improvement (fourth-grade math) compared with the 2013 results. They fail, however, to report that both scores are lower than their peaks, which occurred in 2009. Though the scores appear to have stopped falling, they also have not regained the ground lost over the past six years.

With NAEP scores falling or, at best stable, how long will state education administrators and politicians continue with the ineffective Top 10 by 20 campaign? The only way Missouri will become a top-10–ranked state in terms of educational achievement is if most of the states currently ahead of it somehow begin to fail miserably.

I just do not see that happening. Do you?

The post Missouri’s Latest Report Card: C- appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last week, the Jefferson City News Tribune reported on Missouri’s recently released ACT scores. The 2014–2015 school year was the first year in which every 11th-grader in Missouri was required to take the test, which in theory predicts how well a student will do in college. The Tribune reported that Missouri increased its average score from 21.6 to 21.7, and that Missouri students outscored national averages in every subject area.

But before we pop the champagne bottle, let’s talk about the ACT.

The ACT is an imperfect tool for comparing students from different states. The test is more popular in some states than in others, so participation rates vary. Only thirteen states had 100 percent participation, and 59 percent of students participated nationally. Where participation is voluntary, we might expect scores to be higher on average, as only students interested in taking the test actually take it.

The participation rate in Massachusetts, for example, was 28 percent. The small number of Massachusetts students who took the ACT in 2015 scored a 24.4 on average. Is that because Massachusetts has a superior education system, or because the composition of students is different? New Hampshire, Maine, New York, and Connecticut were also among the top performing states on this year’s ACT, but participation in those states ranged from only 10 to 28 percent.

Scores on the ACT should be paired with other data to determine how well schools, districts, and states are preparing students for college. Let’s take a look at another measure—remediation rates. The map below shows the percentage of students by county who enrolled in remedial coursework in college (coursework they already should have completed in high school) in 2014. Red indicates higher percentages and green indicates lower percentages of enrollment in remedial courses. In the lower half of the state, there is a whole lot of red—63.3 percent of graduates from Ash Grove High School in Ash Grove, Missouri, for example, enrolled in remedial coursework in 2014.

Getting students to college is important, but it’s only half the battle. Missouri should not lose sight of the goal of true college readiness. It is great to see that as more students are taking the test, scores are going up. But with remediation rates like those in Missouri, it’s clear that much work remains to be done.

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As I grew older, Christmas parties became Holiday parties, Christmas Break became Holiday Break, and Santa no longer made an appearance at the Holiday Breakfast, not because I was too old for jolly St. Nick, but because my public school had de-Santa-ed.

In a recent incident in Massachusetts, Santa was removed from an elementary school’s annual Christmas concert. Though many have decried Santa removals as examples of the public school system’s rejection of religious freedom, to me, they are reminders of a need for more educational choice.

In a 2014 survey, 49 percent of Missourians reported that if they could choose any type of school for their child, they would choose private or home school. However, only 9 percent are actually enrolled in private school, while home school data is not available. Why do so many parents want to send their children to schools of choice?

For at least some parents, the desire to send their children to a private school reflects a desire to send their children to a school that shares like-minded values. Unfortunately, school choice, in the absence of legislation and financial means, is impossible for many parents, as actual enrollments show.

In the New Year, I hope to see educational choice expanded for families across Missouri, for both Santa believers and non-believers alike.

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Research shows that a country’s or state’s economic prosperity is closely related to the educational attainment of its citizens. And the math scores that eighth graders achieved is actually a fairly good predictor of future economic activity. So, with that in mind, let’s answer the question “how did Missouri’s eighth-grade students fare on the standardized math test in 2013?”

The percentage of eighth-grade students in Missouri scoring at or above basic was, in 2013, 74 percent, right at the national average. But while the national average increased over the past decade (it was 68 percent in 2003), Missouri’s score hasn’t budged much: a decade ago, 71 percent of Missouri eighth graders scored at the basic level in 2003. More troublesome is the fact that the percentage has slipped in recent years. In 2009, 77 percent of Missouri’s eighth graders scored at the basic level.

This recent report indicates that there has been little progress in raising the math skills of Missouri’s eighth-grade students above the basic level. And if you think that improving the record would be difficult, in 2013, 23 states had higher percentages at the basic level than Missouri, nine of which registered percentages in the 80s. Indeed, in Massachusetts, 86 percent of the state’s eighth graders achieved that level of mastery.

Education must remain a priority for state government. Missouri’s leaders must not allow educational achievements attained thus far to wane. As other states demonstrate, our current educational record can be improved. Missourians’ future economic well-being may well depend on it.

The post The Report Card Is In appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What did the auditors find? A lot. For starters, HPTC tax credits have cost the state nearly $600 million over the last five years alone and more than a billion dollars over the last 10. Missouri leads the country in “qualified rehabilitation expenses” (QRE) for historic preservation, which relates to the expenses against which the HPTC could be applied. Broadly speaking, the higher the QRE that rehabbers claim under the HPTC, the more money the state will be spending on it.

So, how big is Missouri’s QRE lead? Check out this chart from page 8 of the audit.

For perspective, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York are all original U.S. colonies. Are we to believe that Missouri should have been subsidizing preservation spending at almost twice the rate as the next closest state… and not only that, subsidizing it at that level for more than a decade?

I can appreciate that we love our old buildings in Missouri, but if anything and everything can get the stamp of being “historic,” then we degrade the things that are, in fact, historic and waste limited taxpayer resources in the process. Could some projects be worthy of taxpayer support? Possibly, but those cases would be an exception, not a billion dollar rule.

To name a fraction of the examples that underscore this reality, Norwood Hills Country Club should not have received taxpayer money. A whole host of private mansions that the HPTC subsidized should not have received taxpayer money. Check out this story, from the audit:

In 2011, the DED issued about $296,000 in credits to an applicant who renovated a 3-story, 5,400 square foot home in an affluent neighborhood in a metropolitan area. The applicant purchased the home in 1993 for nearly $300,000 and reported about $1.2 million in qualified rehabilitation expenditures. The home has a fair market value of approximately $434,000.

So the owner buys a $300,000 house, drops $1.2 million into it, gets nearly $300,000 (almost what he paid for the house originally!) in credits from the state, and the value of the house rises… about $130,000? On what planet does subsidizing a private residence in a wealthy neighborhood make any sense for taxpayers? Why did Missourians have to effectively reimburse this person the purchase price of their home? Who’s looking out for the taxpayers here? And who in their right mind and looking at the numbers thinks this is a good “investment” for the state?

The HPTC is a mess of a program. The least the legislature could do is set a date for this madness to end.

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Gov. Rick Scott is teaming up with a fellow Republican governor this week in urging businesses based in Missouri to head to states with better business climates.

With Gov. Jay Nixon vetoing $700 million in tax cuts earlier this year, Scott is calling for businesses to move from the Show Me State to the Sunshine State….

Scott’s office sent a letter to Missouri businesses earlier in the week, highlighting Florida’s business climate. So far this year, Scott has sent similar letters to businesses based in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York. Like Missouri, all of those states have Democratic governors.

You may not like The Ricks, but the fact of the matter is that when you look at where Missouri’s money is moving these days, Florida is high on the list of its destinations. Like Texas, it is a serious threat to Missouri’s economic future.

How do we know that? Let’s start with Saint Louis County as an example, from the website How Money Walks. Where has the wealth from Missouri’s largest county been moving since 1992? (Graph omitted for space.)

Two of the top five counties that Saint Louis County lost wealth to are in Florida, although the County’s neighbors — particularly Saint Charles — got in on the action as well. (Note also that Saint Louis County’s main source of inbound wealth was … Saint Louis City.)

Of course, Florida isn’t the only threat. Which state is an obvious threat to the wealth of Jackson County, our second-largest county? (Again, graph omitted.)

No. 1 destination: Kansas, specifically Johnson County.

Missouri is not powerless in all this. We should be actively seeking ways of making the state a better place to live, work, and play — not a better place to grow government. Frankly, it’s frustrating to hear politicians with a penchant for false bravado act like this cash exodus isn’t happening. For once, policymakers, try empowering Missourians to grow this state rather than turning them into Texans, Kansans, and Floridians through your inaction. Stop the excuses. Enough is enough.

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Fallacy 4: State-by-state comparisons need not adjust for the cost of living

Teachers in Missouri are among the worst paid in the nation, right? That is what the editorial board of the Post-Dispatch would have you believe. As evidence, they link to a piece in The Atlantic, which lists the 10 best and 10 worst states in terms of teacher salaries. Missouri ranks 3rd on the 10 worst list.

As with almost everything else written in the editorial piece, there is a huge problem with this comparison — the cost of living.

The average teacher salary listed for Missouri is $46,411. This seems much lower than the $72,708 salary listed for New York or the $69,434 salary listed for California. Of course, it costs much more to live in those places.

A quick visit to a cost-of-living calculator can help us understand the difference between Missouri’s teacher salaries and those of the highest-paying states.

A salary of $45,000 in Saint Louis, Mo., would be approximately equal to:

$90,246 in Brooklyn, N.Y.

$108,079 in Manhattan, N.Y.

$67,821 in Boston, Mass.

$65,598 in Long Beach, Calif.

$74,242 in San Jose, Calif.

$64,807 in Newark-Elizabeth, N.J.

$61,152 in Hartford, Conn.

$72,810 in Stamford, Conn.

It is disappointing that the Post-Dispatch piece misses the mark on so many levels, because there is room for good debate on these issues.

Because I have spent the past four blog posts explaining where the Post-Dispatch went wrong, I think I should close with an area of agreement. The editors note that the legislature is not meeting its obligation because they are under-funding the foundation formula. To that, I agree.

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