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Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Great. Mike McShane, EdChoice, always great to have you on the podcast. I read your Substack, Informed Choice. I know you do not write them all, but you write a lot of them, and I think they are super interesting. A month or so ago, there was a lot of “what’s out, what’s in,” closing down 2025 and starting 2026. I really liked your post about six words for 2026, but…

Mike McShane (00:03)
Always great to be with you. Thanks for having me. I tried to.

Susan Pendergrass (00:28)
I want to talk about that, but generally speaking, I have been having this feeling, and I think we have even talked about this on the podcast, that something has changed in K–12 education in the United States. Something seems different than it did. You track the number of kids in private school choice programs, which took forever to get to a million, and now it is like a million and a half, right? It just seems to have been growing so fast.

Mike McShane (00:52)
Yeah. I think there has definitely been a shift. I have noticed that, with the start of the year and legislative sessions starting across the country, I am talking to journalists and other folks, and it seems like the normal conversation I would have had in the past was, “Are we going to have these programs, is there going to be choice, or what?” Now it is, “What is the shape of it going to be?”

So much of choice now is being taken as a given. I think we are even seeing that within public school districts. Even in states that might not have private school choice or robust charter schools, they are at least saying, “Parents are going to need to have choice, and maybe we can keep the genie in the bottle by just having it within public school districts, or in between public school districts.” But the idea that we are going to go back to residentially assigned public schools…

Susan Pendergrass (01:41)
Like Kansas.

Mike McShane (01:50)
…with the odd aberration here and there, it just seems like that shift has happened. Now it is a question of what it is going to look like, and it is going to look different in different states. It is not a “whether,” it is a “how.”

Susan Pendergrass (02:03)
That’s right, because we have a whole bunch of second-generation choosers, right? We have parents of young kids whose parents chose it, so they are not, like you said, going to go backwards.

Another interesting outcome you have talked about over the years is that the Catholic school movement is growing again, right? Like in Florida, we are seeing a resurgence in Catholic schools, and in Iowa, because parents did not necessarily not want to send their kids to Catholic schools. Some got mad about the scandals…

Mike McShane (02:05)
Yeah, for sure. Iowa, Florida, and probably other places when data comes out, for sure.

Susan Pendergrass (02:32)
…or they did not want to pay tuition, and now they can. And certainly this survey you all have done for so long, on where parents would send their kids to school versus where they do send their kids to school, maybe we are going to see some sort of convergence where parents can actually send their kids to the school they want.

A couple of the words you said are going to be big in education in 2026, “participants,” is that right? Participants.

Mike McShane (02:34)
Yeah. Totally, absolutely. “Participants” is one of them.

Susan Pendergrass (03:02)
And “supply side.” What do you mean by “participants”?

Mike McShane (03:06)
“Participants” is, there is this big debate now, and in the piece I started with very general words that are part of the broader conversation, and then I got very narrow into school choice research words. “Participants” is kind of a school choice research word, but not entirely. I think it is going to be part of broader debates about choice in general.

There is a big question out there, who uses these programs? Who is going to participate? There are competing theories. Skeptics say it is going to be all rich kids, or kids who are already in private schools. Stronger advocates say it will be low-income kids, or kids desperate for more options.

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and it will probably be different in different places at different times. Some of the emerging research suggests that when universal private school choice programs first start, for reasons that are perfectly predictable, students who are already in private schools are the first movers.

Susan Pendergrass (04:01)
Sure.

Mike McShane (04:28)
That is probably because private schools find out about these programs and have an audience. They can say, “Hey, you all know how you are paying to go here? Now you do not have to do that anymore.” And then over time, the circle expands outward.

Susan Pendergrass (04:33)
They pass out a piece of paper in every backpack, yeah. “You should get this.”

Mike McShane (04:48)
More and more, those families have neighbors, cousins, and people they play YMCA basketball with. The word gets out over time. A lot of traditional channels for educating people do not work as well. It is not like everyone watches the nightly news or reads the local newspaper.

Susan Pendergrass (05:08)
“Put it on your website.” That’s a Missouri legislative mainstay, put it on your website.

Mike McShane (05:14)
So a lot of this comes out via word of mouth or discussions. You could look at the same state and see participation change over time.

Because these programs are rolling out in different states at different times, there is not going to be one national answer to who is participating. It could be the first year in Mississippi, but the second year in Alabama, and the makeup of students will be different. Because of the nationalized nature of coverage, people will keep pushing for “the one answer,” but there isn’t one. Though, to be fair, some people will say there is. I do not think that will be true.

Susan Pendergrass (06:07)
Yeah, I get a ton of questions around the rural issue. Either it is going to be the demise of our rural school system because we are all going to close, or rural families do not need it, which are opposites. It is opposites, right?

Mike McShane (06:09)
Yeah. It cannot be both. And yet a frequent criticism is that it will be both of them.

Susan Pendergrass (06:25)
But I get that a lot. “There are no private schools for them to go to,” and “it is going to cause rural schools to close.”

Certainly in Missouri, even our MOScholars program is quite small, and we do not really have charter schools outside of two districts, two very far away places. So I think for a lot of folks in Missouri, it is mysterious, who would do this, and why would anyone want it? And of course, “All the poor kids are going to go to the wealthy school districts.” Still a lot of talk about property taxes. It is almost like 2005 in Missouri, a lot of that going on.

But the reality is, in long-running programs, and now I am thinking open enrollment, anywhere you let parents pick, you get a lot of rural participation. They have the fewest choices, right? And you get a lot of urban participation, and some suburban participation. Like you said, I do not think you can…

Mike McShane (06:55)
Yeah, right.

Susan Pendergrass (07:20)
I have had so many parents over the years say, “We do not need that here because all our schools are good.” And I am like, I promise you there is a child who got on the bus with a stomach ache this morning because they did not want to go to school, for whatever reason. They think the teachers do not like them, or they are being bullied, whatever it is. I promise you there are families who would leave if they could easily do it.

Mike McShane (07:30)
Yeah, for sure. Totally.

One thing that is going to be interesting, as we watch this play out, with questions about who is participating and who is leaving public schools, is that there are broader trends of public school enrollment decreasing. You hear in some states, “My gosh, all these public schools are closing because of choice programs.” But the state next door that does not have a choice program, their public schools are closing too, because there are just fewer kids than there were before.

So that is another thing we have to disentangle, the broader population trends. I was just seeing something earlier about how congressional seats and electoral college seats are going to change because of population shifts.

Susan Pendergrass (08:17)
It’s huge.

Mike McShane (08:26)
You look at states like New York and California losing large numbers of people, Florida and Texas increasing numbers of people. These are people in general, because that is how it all happens. We have to start with that baseline and then layer these other things on top, because I feel like school choice is going to get blamed for this, even in places where it does not exist.

Susan Pendergrass (08:36)
Yeah. I cannot tell you how many times I have talked about this and shocked people. Every school district in St. Louis County, for example, has declining enrollment by large numbers. Clayton’s declining enrollment, Ladue declining enrollment, all declining enrollment. People are like, “Where are they going?” And I say, “They were not born.” They simply were not born.

We had our biggest kindergarten cohort in 2013. That moved through to senior year of high school like two years ago. It is just demographics. They just were not born.

Mike McShane (09:00)
Right? Yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (09:20)
We have net out-migration of some groups of people, people with bachelor’s degrees, but for sure, it is demographics. These kids were not born.

There is going to be this push and pull between five-to-seventeen-year-olds and retirees, basically, because we are getting more old people and fewer young people. Do we build a school or a nursing home? I think it is going to be a thing.

And we still have school districts getting bonds, 30-year bonds, to build schools and buy buses. I do not know if that is the right answer. At least the charter school sector, and probably similarly the private school sector, figured out how to not be in the real estate business, how to lease a building, or do different types of arrangements. They are going to benefit from this, while the public school system is still building schools. The kids are not being born, but we will see how that plays out.

Another thing you mentioned, one of your words I have been thinking about a lot, two of them, is “transparency.” I have wondered, can I start calling accountability transparency? Because accountability is kind of negative, but transparency, of course.

And you talk about “rage bait.” Sorry, I am rolling these into one, but with early media stories around some of these private school choice programs, like Arizona, people really jumped on what parents were spending their money on. As though they cannot be trusted to spend this money, in the way the public school system can be trusted with billions, I mean trillions, of dollars. Parents cannot be trusted with this $8,000, they will simply…

Mike McShane (10:52)
Totally. This is the irony. The irony is kind of like the discussion earlier, how there are no places in rural America, and everyone will leave rural schools to go to these non-existent places. Both cannot be true at the same time.

We cannot say these programs are not transparent and then talk about all the individual purchases families are making. That has to be transparent for you to be able to make those arguments. It is kind of a shell game people are playing when they talk about transparency.

When you say, “Here are ways in which ESA programs are not transparent,” your research is a perfect example of the opposite. Transaction-level data, you have published papers that offer transaction-level data on every purchase in the ESA program.

Susan Pendergrass (11:59)
Trust me, there are hundreds of thousands of records.

Mike McShane (12:00)
Right, hundreds of thousands of records that are available for anybody to look at.

I think this is actually good. We need to have discussions about what should be included in these programs and what should not. It is an education savings account, not just a savings account, so we have to draw the borders around what is an educational purchase and what is not.

We live in a big, vibrant democracy, so we need to have these discussions. Should you be able to buy a trampoline, or a Lego set, or whatever? Let’s talk about it. That’s fine. Maybe we decide in some cases it is allowed, and in some cases it is not.

This is part of transparency and accountability. You are democratically accountable, we need to participate in this.

But I am still blown away by the number of people who claim these programs are not transparent, when what we know about what parents are doing is more granular and more detailed than any public school district, any charter school network, almost any institution you are going to see. You just do not get transaction-level data on anything.

We can debate whether those are good purchases or not good purchases, but to say they are not being transparent is wild to me.

Susan Pendergrass (13:09)
No, I mean, my kids all went to public school. They certainly went to amusement parks. They certainly watched a lot of movies. They would not want anyone scrutinizing every, you know, you have 30 teachers buying 30 whiteboards. Decisions were made that were not the best.

I did not see anything in the transaction-level data that made me think, “This is outrageous.” And who am I to say woodworking is not an okay thing for your child to learn? Swimming lessons, I had to swim. I do not know.

I do not want to get into that conversation because I assume the best intentions for parents. I cannot understand why a parent would invest the time and effort to get into these programs to simply buy themselves a trampoline, and not really care if their kids are reading or not. I do not understand that, but that is what…

Mike McShane (14:04)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (14:15)
…they are throwing mud at the wall to try to discredit. Clearly, it is what parents want.

I am baffled that, when you look at politics in the United States right now, those on the left just refuse to accept this fact. It is a fact. Parents want to choose their school.

There are certainly Democrats for education reform, and plenty of people working hard from the left, but the general approach feels very last century. The teachers’ union saying, “Nobody wants this, we have to stop it at all costs. We have to put a halt to this and put more money into the public school your address sends you to. We need to fund those fully first before we can ever let kids out.” That is such a failed argument to me.

Mike McShane (15:18)
Look, this is why “accountability” and “transparency” are two of the words for 2026. Opponents to choice have figured out they cannot just go out hammer-and-tongs against it, or directly say, “We are against choice.” People do not learn lessons in politics, but they learn that one.

I was looking at the gubernatorial candidate just to Missouri’s north in Iowa. It was interesting. There was an interview with the Democratic candidate for governor, Rob Sand. He would not come out and condemn the ESA program outright. The interviewer perceptively drilled down and asked, “Are you saying you are not opposed to this program, you just want changes?” He never said yes to that. He has never said, “I am for this program.” If you read between the lines, he is saying, “I am not for this program, but I cannot come out and say it.”

His pivot was immediately, “I am just talking about accountability and transparency.” He wants private schools to follow every single one of the same rules that public schools do, and expects them to somehow do better.

Part of it is, these are folks working in red states who need to make arguments that appeal to conservatives. Accountability appeals to conservatives. Fiscal responsibility appeals to conservatives, not wanting to waste tax dollars. So it is smart strategy. People need to see what it is.

If this is a blue state, these exact same people are making arguments that appeal to progressives. But you are in a red state, so they are trying to make arguments that appeal to you. If you think about it for a little bit longer, what they are saying does not hold a lot of water.

Susan Pendergrass (17:41)
Yeah, and with this federal tax credit program, even though every state has to decide whether or not they are going to take the money, it is going to be a weird shifting of resources. If I live in a state that says, “We are not going to take the money,” that is fine. I can give my $1,700 to a scholarship group in any state. I will just send my $1,700 to another state.

Some states, like Virginia, the governor, one of the last things he did when he left was opt in. Now the new governor is going to have to make this weird choice. Do I want to go against it? If you looked at any poll of parents, any poll, you would know they want to be able to choose where their kids go to school. Do you really want to be the person that withdraws?

Mike McShane (18:21)
Yeah, when she seems to be in a perfect position to just say, “Oh, the last guy did this on the way out, so I guess we are going to do it.” Once they do it for a year and everybody is fine with it, it is just, “Oh well, whatever.”

Susan Pendergrass (18:33)
I do not know. I did not do it.

I think it is going to be really interesting because, again, the way we started this, there is a groundswell. I do not think you are going to turn it back. If you stay on the side of saying it is better when kids can only go to their assigned public school, you are in quicksand. You are going to bury yourself.

Mike McShane (19:03)
Yeah. The only thing I would say, and it was another one of my six words, is “rage bait.” It is always lingering in the background for me. I am seeing it more and more, all day, every day, stuff that shows up in your feed deliberately to upset you, terrify you, whatever.

Rage bait is unpredictable. You never know what is going to catch fire and cause a big shift. There is obviously potential for rage bait content, as we mentioned, we have crossed one and a half million, hundreds of thousands of people in various states, with lots of flexibility in what they can buy. People making bad decisions, people stealing things, it is totally possible that happens. Something egregious could happen.

With a large enough population, even very improbable events can happen. One fear I do have is that something rage-bait-y happens and people lose their minds over it.

But this is the key, if one parent in Arizona does something crazy, that does not mean the other 1,499,999 parents around the country should not have the right or opportunity to do this. We have to be able to say, “This is rage bait, this is not actually what is happening.”

Susan Pendergrass (20:51)
Yeah, we have talked about this. Those of us who have pressed for school choice for so long have said, “We will do anything you want, take our arm. We will put all our data out there, we will be as transparent as possible.” And your colleague, Marty Lueken, had a Substack about this recently, like, “We will take half the money. We do not need all the money, half the money will be…”

Mike McShane (21:08)
For sure.

Susan Pendergrass (21:19)
…150 percent transparent. We will jump through all these hoops just to get this thing that everybody wants, and it is from that transparency that we are going to get those stories. We are going to pay for that.

Mike McShane (21:29)
Yeah. It is important for people to be more attuned to the rage bait they are getting. People ask, “Have you seen this thing that happened in this place?” And I am like, okay, yeah, even if it did, what do you extrapolate?

A teacher in Sacramento did something crazy. There are north of a hundred thousand schools across America. There are north of three million public school teachers. At any given moment, someone is doing something dumb. I do not know what to extrapolate from that. It could just be one crazy person.

This is not just education. Across public policy, you point to one person in the military doing something terrible to delegitimize the military in general. Do not fall for this.

To be fair, sometimes we in the school choice movement, or education reform, have done rage bait of our own. People have used social media to point out, “My gosh, look at this assignment that a second-grade teacher in Poughkeepsie did, this is why we need school choice.” People have done that.

The measure with which you measure will be measured back to you. If you live by the sword, die by the sword.

Susan Pendergrass (22:54)
John Oliver did a story on charter schools. Remember, it was the guy in Florida that was letting a charter school be a nightclub at night? There is no way that is representative of charter schools.

Mike McShane (22:58)
Yeah, I remember that.

Susan Pendergrass (23:10)
That was an example I found shocking, but it is not representative. And you are right, they will find those stories.

Mike McShane (23:13)
Yeah, totally. We should all use less rage bait. We should not use rage bait to say just because one teacher in one place did something dumb, that is an indictment of public education in general. Nor should we allow the same thing to be done in reverse, which is, because one family did something crazy, we should not have choice at all.

Susan Pendergrass (23:49)
That leads to another one of your words, “slop.” There is so much talk about AI in schools and what to do about it. Is one person going to figure this out for every school everywhere, or are we all going to figure it out individually?

Mike McShane (24:03)
Yeah, I played out the scenario I am worried about. I do not know if it will happen in 2026, but it might.

We have heard a lot about AI in schools, students cheating, which is real and worrisome. But the specific scenario I have not heard as many people talking about is the prevalence of AI video, and the ability to create videos of things that did not happen.

How many, if you have a student in a classroom, after taking a picture or a short, unrelated video of their teacher, they can put it through a series of prompts, “Hey, have this teacher do,” and then insert whatever horrible thing, say something horrible, do something horrible.

Susan Pendergrass (24:34)
Yeah.

Mike McShane (24:53)
And if you are not savvy, and I will be the first to say I think I am a savvy consumer of the internet, I have been fooled or very close to fooled. AI videos of animals doing things, dogs protecting people from bears, or that one recently that went around with a bald eagle that had ice on its beak that someone knocked off, whatever.

Susan Pendergrass (24:58)
It is like a parlor game, right? No dogs are going off diving boards, just to clarify. The rabbits on the trampoline, these are not happening. But you are right.

Mike McShane (25:20)
People who are not as savvy, the thing I spelled out was, someone does that, and then suddenly the next PTA meeting is flooded with people because this viral thing went around. The superintendent or principal has to say, “This did not happen, it is not real.”

If you do not have the media literacy, it is like one person’s word versus another. “We saw it happen, it is on video.” “No, it did not happen, it is AI.” How we adjudicate those things, and how it could be weaponized by teenagers, or by bad actors, all of that stuff will happen. Whenever a new model is released, everyone tries to break it immediately, they are much more creative than I ever was.

I am worried for teachers, worried for schools, worried for school board meetings. It could be anything. It could be taking video at a football game and saying something happened that did not. Even if it all works out eventually, the time and energy wasted dealing with it…

Now, again, I am hoping more and more schools, this could be a real kick in the rear end to get phones out of schools and say, “We are not going to have phones in schools, because people are going to be making AI videos of their teachers.” That is one of a thousand reasons we should not have phones in schools.

But it is not the only place kids are interacting with one another, or with teachers. So we have to be really skeptical when we see that video of that teacher, or that student, or that principal doing something. Take a deep breath and ask, “Is this video real? Does this pass the smell test? Does this sound like something a teacher would actually do?” I am increasingly worried about that. There are many other things people worry about that I do not really worry about, but AI video in the context of schools, bad news bears.

Susan Pendergrass (27:53)
Yeah, I think we are going to have to start adjusting our thinking to only believing things that happen in front of our face, things we can touch. The prevalence of, you know, Amazon ads now, they are… I mean, I went to get my haircut and somebody was holding up a picture, and she was like, “Okay, well, that is not a real person.” We are going to have to default to disbelief if it is on a phone or on a screen. If it is happening in front of you, you can touch it, you can believe it. But the rest of it, I think we are going to become extra skeptical, because I do not believe much stuff anymore.

Mike McShane (28:22)
Totally. Are schools going to need CCTV cameras everywhere? Are we going to be oddly surveilled in a lot of different ways, just for CYA? “If people are going to be making up fake videos, we need the real video of what is going on.” I do not know how that is going to go, but…

That was the “rage bait” one, my plea to people, please do not fall victim to rage bait. It is pinging parts of our brains that we should not. I get wrapped up in it too. “My God, I cannot believe that is happening.” Then you take 10 seconds and you are like, “Wait, why am I fired up about this road rage incident in South Carolina?” Someone cut somebody off on the highway. Who cares? I am not there. It is not my deal.

I think this “slop” stuff is also something we are going to have to be really cautious about and thoughtful about, because it could cause lots of problems.

Susan Pendergrass (29:35)
Yeah, but then people are like, “I am not going to allow AI, I am going to check it.” I think AI, we are going to have to accept, right? We have to live with it.

Mike McShane (29:41)
Yeah, we are going to have to realize this is just part of it. There will be so many great things that come out of it, the creativity it will unleash.

In our own Substack, a bunch of the graphics we do are AI generated. I could not, I laugh, I have young kids, they are better drawers, I am horrible at it, but I can do this stuff with a couple of prompts in ChatGPT. “Hey, make me…” and they can be funny. You can do someone in the style of a famous painter and suddenly it is a Renaissance painting of me.

That is incredible productivity. The fact that I do not have to have a graphic designer, I can basically do it myself and put out essentially a small newspaper with some contributors and a bit of AI. That is an insane productivity increase, and it is incredible, but we have to be cautious of the downsides.

Susan Pendergrass (30:48)
Finally, your last word, “supply side.” In Missouri, folks will say, “Well, we do not need private school choice in our rural areas, there are no private schools,” as though the supply of private schools is fixed. It is treated like a natural result of how much interest there is, the kind of people who live in the community, and what is there is there, without thinking that if parents suddenly had $7,000 or $8,000 to spend, maybe somebody would open a new school.

Or not even a new school. Maybe somebody would open a visual arts business, or a soccer academy, tutoring, dyslexia therapy, whatever it is they think parents want or need. You would be free to be an entrepreneur in that space. That piece is largely overlooked, because it is like, “We have this many private schools with this many seats, so we can only have this many scholarships.” It is like, no, that is not fixed. Do you think we are going to see a lot of changes in that area?

Mike McShane (32:00)
Yeah, because another dimension where people think things are fixed is not only the number and locations, but the shape of what schools look like. “We are not going to have a private school in this small area because we cannot have a brick-and-mortar building with 30 rooms and 250 kids.” That is not what we are talking about.

If you can get 10 kids together at $8,000 apiece…

Susan Pendergrass (32:26)
There are no buildings.

Mike McShane (32:36)
…you can do a lot of interesting stuff. Especially if you can get space donated, leverage resources in the community, maybe some online stuff, and a local teacher. You could put together a heck of an education on $80,000 or $100,000.

It is happening. What makes it challenging to talk about is that it is happening across different dimensions. At the same time we are talking about Catholic schools growing and starting new schools in a traditional sense, two blocks away in some rented bungalow people are creating a Montessori micro school.

Because these things get spoken about in national terms and in a thousand-word news story, we struggle to discuss multiple dimensions. Existing schools are growing, new schools are emerging, and those new schools are going to look different. Some will grow, some will shrink, all these things can be happening at once.

Our job as researchers and observers is to do a lot of descriptive work, describe what is happening. There has been a push in earlier generations of school choice research toward causal results, horse-race comparisons, “Are they better than public schools?” “Is this type of private school better than that type?” But the only reason we were able to do that in 1998 is because, for a hundred years before, people did descriptive work to know, how many schools, what are they doing? Then you can talk about who is doing better, because you have to decide what they are doing, where they are, who is attending, are there differences.

It is almost like we are starting over.

Susan Pendergrass (34:39)
Yeah.

Mike McShane (35:01)
…doing that basic descriptive work. What is actually happening? What are people doing?

Susan Pendergrass (35:08)
Yeah, I know somebody who started a school in a barn on their property, and the parents came and converted the empty barn to a school. I know somebody who started a mobile school, basically in a big van, so that the school came to their house one day a week. And I know someone who started one in a high-rise in Queens. It is only limited by people’s imagination, basically, right?

And a like-minded group of parents. There are more people homeschooling now than used to be, so you could do this individually, but there are many more opportunities to do it. Parents, what emerged from the pandemic, at least, is they want their kids home maybe two days or three days. That is popular, and people are finding that two days out of the house creates unique opportunities in that space.

I think it is limited by people’s imagination, and some curriculum standards, and perhaps some accountability. But if you can meet those, I think we are seeing this idea.

I am not trying to be anti-traditional public school, but I butted up against this when my kids were little. “We are the only ones who know how to do this, so you have to accept our way of doing it because it is tried and tested and comes out of our schools of education at the universities.” This is the one and only way you have to teach the number line in third grade. “This is how it has to be, we cannot vary it because we are the great equalizer of civic society in the United States.”

Your boss, Rob Enlow, really shut me down on this. It has not panned out. We only read and do math less well each year.

I cannot imagine that letting all these flowers bloom is going to have a worse result. If we fast forward 20 years and look at median earnings and educational attainment rates, and we let this thrive, I think the outcome would improve. I do not see how it goes down.

Mike McShane (37:23)
That is the thing. You mentioned the interesting times we are living in now. So many of the “parade of horribles” choice opponents talked about forever, polarization, balkanization, people retreating to silos, it is like, hey guys, that already happened without choice. You cannot blame choice, because choice did not exist yet for that to happen.

Lots of people pushing each other in the streets went to public schools. Statistically, these are public school graduates having large problems with one another.

The conservative in me says things can always get worse. The fundamental progressive view is things can always get better, and the fundamental conservative view is things could always get worse. That strand in me says, yes, things could get worse. But across a lot of these dimensions, academic outcomes, civic outcomes, there is a lot of room for growth, and not nearly as much bottom end to fall out. So the risks associated with giving people more choices are not nearly as severe as proponents of the traditional public schooling system make it out to be.

Susan Pendergrass (38:58)
Yeah. Well, in Missouri, 40 percent of our fourth graders are below the basic level in reading, which means they cannot read at all. They cannot read. They are illiterate.

Would 40 percent of parents, if given the money to spend on their child’s education, have a nine-year-old and say, “Turns out they cannot read. I tried and tried, we just did not get there. They just cannot read.” I do not think so.

I know this is not the perfect solution, that accountability through parental choice is the answer. I am not saying that. But I do not think that if parents were truly put in charge, four out of 10 would just say, “Gosh darn it, this kid is never going to read, there is probably a lot of opportunity in the service industry.” I do not think so. I think that would be a much better check on the system.

Interesting stuff. Thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it, always.

Mike McShane (39:42)
Yep. Yeah. I agree with you. Agreed, 100 percent.

Susan Pendergrass (39:59)
So great to talk to you. What is your Substack called?

Mike McShane (40:02)
Informed Choice, so people can check that out. Informed Choice on Substack. Subscribe, it would be great.

Susan Pendergrass (40:05)
Yeah, it is really interesting. Great. Thanks so much.

Mike McShane (40:10)
Thanks for having me.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post The Six Words Driving the Education Debate in 2026 With Mike McShane appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In this episode, James V. Shuls speaks with Michael Q. McShane, Director of National Research at EdChoice and Senior Fellow of Education Policy at the Show-Me Institute, about his latest paper, ‘Why Markets Matter in Education.’ They explore the growing role of market forces in education, the benefits of choice and competition for schools and students, the impact of educational marketplaces on innovation and quality, the challenges of government intervention in schooling, and the long-term advantages of allowing parents to shape their children’s educational journeys.

Read the essay here.

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Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Why Markets Matter in Education with Mike McShane appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On April 26, 2023, the Show-Me Institute, in partnership with EdChoice and Show-Me Opportunity, hosted a virtual event featuring EdChoice’s Marty Lueken, Director of Fiscal Research & Education Center, and Mike McShane, Director of National Research, join Show-Me Institute’s Director of Education Research, Susan Pendergrass. Mike and Marty discussed their recently published report titled K-12 Without Borders: Public School Students, Families, and Teachers Shut in by Education Boundaries, which examines what a K-12 education system with fewer school district borders would mean for students, teachers, and taxpayers.

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Show-Me Institute Policy Briefs on Open Enrollment in Missouri:

Open Enrollment in Missouri

School Choice and School Transportation: Exploring Opportunities

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post K-12 without Borders: School Choice in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When you write an op-ed, you are often constrained by word count. Newspapers have limited space and often like guest editorials under 600 or 700 words. This means I couldn’t say all the things I wanted to say. In my op-ed, I focused on critical thinking and media literacy. Here, I would like to talk about civility and meaningful dialogue.

I have been writing for the Show-Me Institute for nearly a decade. I began writing about pensions early on. In all that time, I have been invited to debate or discuss ideas with Missouri’s educators exactly zero times. Instead, educators and the leadership of their organizations have attempted to shut down debate. They do this overtly, as in when they send out legislative alerts or emails from superintendents warning teachers to not take my survey, and they do this covertly with the language they use.

Instead of having a debate on the issues of pension reform or even school choice, they suggest I and the Show-Me Institute are enemies who want to “dismantle” the pension system and that we are “privatizers” who want to destroy public education. It’s smart really if the goal is to stifle debate. When you set someone up as your enemy who is out to destroy you, you have little incentive to engage them in a meaningful dialogue.

Dismissing our rivals by name calling and refusing to engage, however, is terrible if you believe the best way to the truth is by discussing and debating ideas.

Like it or not, there are some important policy discussions that we should wrestle with when it comes to Missouri’s teacher pension systems. What should we do about the three separate systems that place St. Louis and Kansas City at a competitive disadvantage? Should we be concerned about the large unfunded liabilities of these systems? Should we care that the systems are designed in a way that favors wealthy school districts and increases inequity?

We cannot have those conversations when one side simply wants to shut down the discussion.

I believe we should engage with the best arguments of our opponents. And I am more than willing to engage with any group of educators who would like to seriously discuss these issues.

The post Can We Have Meaningful Dialogue on Pension Reform? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Have you ever wondered: Do the narratives continually pushed by defenders of the status quo in education actually hold up? Are they fact or just plain fiction? Is the proverbial sky falling in education as opponents would have us believe?

On March 9, 2022 EdChoice’s Jason Bedrick, Director of Policy, and Mike McShane, Director of National Research, joined us for a virtual event to challenge these narratives and share their published papers on two specific topics. Bedrick’s Who’s Afraid of School Choice? follows up on some of the dire predictions that school choice opponents have made over the years and sees how little they match reality. McShane’s The Accountability Myth attacks head-on the argument that public schools are accountable while private schools are not.

The post Watch: School Choice Mythbusting appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Register here to reserve your spot for this virtual event today!

The post School Choice Mythbusting Virtual Event appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow of Education Policy James Shuls contributed a chapter on rural school finance. Although the chapter is not about any specific state, James drew on several examples from Missouri. For instance, he explained how Missouri’s property tax assessment practices place rural schools at a disadvantage when raising local funds for schools and how many rural communities tax themselves at lower rates. When you combine these two facts, it’s easy to see why rural schools receive much less money than their suburban and urban counterparts.

There are a myriad of issues affecting rural schools, and the book is a good reminder that education reform shouldn’t stop at city limits.

The post No Longer Forgotten appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Haven’t heard of it? Don’t worry, few have—and even fewer have benefitted from it.

Bryce’s Law was passed in 2013. It was intended to provide scholarships to students with special needs so they could get the educational services they need from specialized private institutions such as the Judevine Center for Autism. As Mike McShane, Susan Pendergrass, and I point out in our recent essay, “Bryce’s Law Revisited: Serving Missouri’s Neediest Students through Targeted Scholarships,” not a single student has benefited from Bryce’s Law.

Join Mike on November 13 in Kansas City or Susan in St. Louis on November 15 as they share how Bryce’s Law could be revised to do what it was meant to do—serve students with special needs.

If you have a child with special needs or know someone who does, or even if you just want to find out more, I highly recommend you attend one of these events. Unlike some political issues that generate millions of dollars in backing from organized interest groups, scholarships for students with special needs are not likely to receive that kind of substantial support. You won’t see any television adds. You won’t see yard signs. And if people are not educated on this issue, we won’t see any special needs students benefitting from Bryce’s Law.

The post How Can Missouri Support Students with Special Needs? Find Out. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 2008, Scharnhorst introduced a bill known as “Bryce’s Law” to the Missouri legislature. Had it passed, it would have created a valuable school choice program that provided scholarships for children like Bryce who suffer from autism or other severe health impairments. Funding for the scholarships would have come from donations from individuals who in turn would receive a credit toward their taxes. The tax credit scholarship bill failed to gain support in the House of Representatives and did not pass. Many lawmakers simply would not support a school choice bill that would allow students to use funds at a private school, no matter how needy the students might be.

Undeterred, Scharnhorst proposed similar bills in 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2013. Finally, in 2014 the Missouri Legislature passed Bryce’s Law. However, the bill that finally passed was not the same as the bills that Scharnhorst has previously proposed—it did not contain a tax credit. Instead, the truly agreed to and finally passed bill called on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to seek grants to fund scholarships.

The change in the bill meant that donors would only receive a standard deduction for donating to a scholarship organization, just as they would had the bill not been passed. Since 2014, DESE has not reported a single student as having benefitted from Bryce’s law.

Next year Bryce’s law is set to sunset. However, the needs of students with autism and other severe impairments have never been greater, and expanding their education options has never been more important. Rather than let this worthy program simply die without ever having reached its potential, lawmakers should finally fund Bryce’s law. They should do so directly, not through a tax deduction or a tax credit program. This is the only way to ensure that funding is available to serve these precious children in the programs their parents choose.

Check back later this month when the Show-Me Institute releases an essay, “Bryce’s Law Revisited: Serving Missouri’s Neediest Students Through Targeted Scholarships,” co-authored by Michael McShane, Susan Pendergrass, and James Shuls.

The post It’s Time to Fund Bryce’s Law appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh has not had the opportunity to rule on many education cases, as there is only one school district in the DC Circuit Court’s jurisdiction. However, he has written essays and amicus briefs on school choice cases. He clearly supports the notion that religious schools and institutions should be able to receive state funding provided that “the funding was pursuant to a neutral program that, among other things, included religious and nonreligious institutions alike.”

Like many states, Missouri has a Blaine amendment in its Constitution. These amendments, originally intended to discriminate against the waves of Catholic immigrants coming from Europe, are used as cover to prevent parents from spending their children’s state education dollars anywhere other than their assigned public school. (For more on Blaine amendments and some additional thoughts on the Kavanaugh nomination, see my colleague Mike McShane’s recent Forbes piece here.) Ironically, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case in 2017 that focused on a Missouri church-affiliated preschool’s access to public grant money for playground resurfacing. While the court found in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church, the finding was narrow and Missouri’s Blaine Amendment still stands.

Judge Kavanaugh has spoken approvingly of Justice William Rehnquist and the impact that his writings on the Establishment Clause had on Trinity Lutheran and other cases. He was also part of the defense team when Governor Jeb Bush was sued over the Florida voucher program. It will be interesting to see how this son of a public school teacher contributes to court decisions on education, particularly those that involve private school choice.

School choice will likely take a back seat to other issues in this confirmation process. As Missourians consider a Constitutional Convention in 2022, however, we may be faced with either ditching our Blaine Amendment ourselves or having it done for us.

The post Could This Be a Win for Parents? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Details and key questions of the sales tax plan — how the money is distributed, who oversees and manages the program, how outcomes are measured — remain a work in progress.

While the details of the 3/8-cent sales tax plan remain unclear, so too are the benefits. My colleague Emily Stahly wrote in late 2016 that,

In Georgia and Oklahoma—states with universal pre-K programs—there is evidence that pre-K has reduced achievement gaps. The jury is still out in New York, which established universal pre-K only two years ago. Tennessee, on the other hand, implemented targeted pre-K for low-income children. Positive results were evident when these children entered kindergarten, but the benefits began to fade by first grade. By third grade, these students were performing worse than other students on statewide assessments.

One much-heralded study claiming big successes as a result of pre-K was perhaps oversold. Mike McShane wrote for National Review,

If you look at the table [page 8 of the study by Heckman et al.] that describes the cohort of students the authors studied, you see an initially recruited sample of 121 students. The actual “treatment” of center-based child care from ages zero to five had 53 participants in one of the two programs and 17 in the other, for a total sample of 70 students. It is a huge leap to argue that such an intensive, hothouse study of such a small sample is proof that such an intervention would work at scale.

Pre-K education makes intuitive sense, but actual research suggests that it isn’t as simple as funding a program and getting results. Sometimes it seems to work, and sometimes it doesn’t. Similarly, we agree that K–12 education is a good idea and yet recognize that not every district does a good job of offering it.

One promising aspect of the plan, according to the Star, is that the program may be set up to offer tuition assistance for families to choose their own program, including from among public and private providers. Giving decision-making power to parents will increase the likelihood that the Pre-K providers will need to produce results if they want to attract students.

In any case, there’s no need for a headlong leap of faith into a costly pre-K program. If Kansas City leaders want to once again increase an already-high sales tax rate, voters need much more detail and likely more time, to evaluate the proposal and its promise.

The post Are Sales Taxes to Fund Pre-K a Good Idea? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s tuition increases are lower than most other states because state law prohibits colleges and universities from increasing tuition beyond increases in the consumer price index. The point here is that Missouri’s institutions are getting a double whammy. They are seeing reductions in state revenues and are simultaneously limited from raising additional funds through tuition.

To some, this doesn’t sound so bad. There has been growing concern about the rising costs in higher education. And increasingly, there is concern about the seemingly illiberal attitudes on college campuses that shout conservative speakers down. And we all remember the fiasco at Mizzou a few years ago.

These are legitimate concerns. Indeed, as George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has suggested in his recent book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, there are compelling arguments against public subsidies for higher education.

There are few solid arguments, however, for not allowing colleges and universities to raise tuition to the level they deem appropriate.

I understand the sentiment of wanting to make college affordable, but there are better ways to do it. For example, as mentioned in SMI’s Blueprint on Higher Education, Missouri could encourage competency-based education programs or income share agreements.

Prices are the thing that help the free-market flourish. Prices tell producers where they can make profits, and prices allow consumers to choose wisely. Tuition caps are anti-free market because they distort the true cost of a college education by artificially keeping the sticker price low. It’s time to remove these artificial caps and allow more free-market policies into higher education.

The post Tuition Caps on Higher Education Are Anti-Free Market appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

New research confirms, however, that school choice gives parents an incentive to become more knowledgeable about different schooling options. A study by Michael F. Lovenheim and Patrick Walsh found “clear evidence that the availability of public school-choice options under NCLB [No Child Left Behind] increased demand for information on school quality.” When parents had the option to transfer their child to another school, internet searches about the schools in their area increased; conversely, when there was no longer a transfer option, searches dropped.

When people say that parents are not informed enough decide among school options, they fail to recognize that school choice can actually encourage parents to gather information and shop around for the best school.

Moreover, state agencies and third-party organizations can help make information on school quality more accessible. Louisiana’s Department of Education launched a website that allows families to compare schools and child care centers via customizable searches.

Show Me KC Schools is a nonprofit organization that helps parents navigate all of their options—public, charter, and private schools—in Kansas City and provides them with the information they need. In an article for US News & World Report last month, Mike McShane described what the organization does to assist parents:

They have an online school finder that allows users to compare and contrast the offerings and performance of different schools. They host a school fair that had over 700 attendees last year. They offer guided school tours that begin with a discussion of what parents are looking for and end with a debrief and conversation with other parents whose children attend the various schools they have visited.

Sure, there will be a learning curve if new school choice programs are introduced, but organizations like Show Me KC Schools can help with the transition.

The bottom line is that school choice empowers parents—it creates an incentive to find out which school will meet their child’s needs and it provides parents with an opportunity to send their child to that school. We should not underestimate parents’ desire to give their kids a better education or the time they are willing to devote to that effort if given the opportunity. 

The post Think Parents Won’t Get the Information They Need To Choose Between Schools? Think Again. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Illinois may adopt a tax-credit scholarship program this week as part of broader education funding reform. According to early reports, the program would be capped at $75 million in partial tax credits for those who donate towards private school scholarships.

While the plan still has to pass, there are some important lessons here for Missouri: Tax-credit scholarships can be bipartisan and they can help cash-strapped states. In fact, Mike McShane and Marty Lueken found that a tax-credit scholarship program potentially could save the state of Missouri up to $18 million per year. 

The post Could Illinois Be Missouri’s Role Model for School Choice? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When you have always come to expect something done one way, it can completely rock your world when you see someone doing it differently. That was the case when I visited KIPP Delta, a charter school in southeast Arkansas, midway through my doctoral program. I spoke with a staff member who told me about their mission to get students to, and through, college. The school was using business software to manage contacts with graduates and ensure that each student would have a KIPP staff member following up with them periodically post-graduation. Graduates within a certain distance would even receive a visit from someone from KIPP.

When I heard this, my first thought was, Why hadn’t my school done something like this?

Recently, The 74 reported that just 9 percent of students from the bottom fourth of the income distribution graduate college within 6 years. For a number of charter school networks, however, that figure is significantly higher. Nationwide, 38 percent of all KIPP graduates go on to graduate from college within six years. That’s more than four times the national average!

I’m sure it isn’t just KIPP’s post–high school follow-ups that have led to this dramatic increase in college graduation; KIPP schools also appear to provide their students with a firm K-12 foundation. Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

Yet, in Missouri we continue to restrict where charter schools can open. Both my experience visiting KIPP Delta and the evidence presented here suggest that we would be wise to remove these unnecessary restrictions. Doing so could help more of our students from low-income families get their college degrees.

For more information, read: “Charter Schools: Do They Work?” by Michael McShane. 

The post Charter Schools Boost College Completion appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

You may never have heard of James G. Blaine. He didn’t win. Yet, for more than a century we have been living with one of Blaine’s legacies—Blaine amendments. While he was a senator, Blaine offered an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prevent the federal government from funding sectarian institutions. It was widely known that the amendment stemmed from anti-Catholic sentiment. In 2000, Justices Thomas, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Kennedy stated in Mitchell v. Helms that “it was an open secret that ‘sectarian was code for ‘Catholic.’” The federal amendment failed, but similar versions would be installed later in 37 state constitutions.

Many state officials have cited their Blaine amendments as a reason that private school choice programs would be unconstitutional. These amendments have also prevented religious institutions from receiving funds for non-religious activities. For instance, the amendment was used to bar Trinty Lutheran Church in Columbia, Missouri, from participating in the state’s scrap tire program, which helps nonprofits resurface playground surfaces. Trinity Lutheran appealed this decision all the way to the United States Supreme Court and won.

There is still some debate, as my colleague Mike McShane has noted, as to what impact the Trinity ruling will have on school choice legislation. Our first indication, however, is that the court’s repudiaiton of anti-religious sentiment may bode well for private school choice programs. On June 27, the day after the Trinity Lutheran ruling, the nation’s high court vacated the Supreme Court of Colorodo’s ruling in the Douglas County, Colorado, voucher program, which had been found unconstitutional. The case has been remanded to the state supreme court in light of the Trinity Lutheran ruling.

The Institute for Justice, a group that supports school choice, has long stated that Missouri’s Blaine Amendment was relatively strong and has suggested vouchers may not be feasible in the state. It will be interesting to see if the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Trinity case will further impact Blaine amendments in Missouri and other states. We may never get rid of rancor in politics, but this may be the case that helps us say goodbye to Blaine, Blaine, Amendment Blaine, the school choice barrier from the state of Maine.

The post The School Choice Barrier from the State of Maine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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SB 185 would create a statewide regulatory framework for TNCs, making it possible for them to operate across different jurisdictions that may have conflicting local regulations (or no TNC regulations at all). The law embodies free-market principles and could create jobs, improve mobility, and increase personal freedom. Show-Me Institute analysts, myself included, have testified in favor of SB 185 and similar legislation (e.g. HB 130) for years. So why is the bill hung up?

The Missouri Times reports that a senator:

opposes the legislation because he fears it will lead to fewer people, namely those who sign up to become drivers for TNCs like Uber, Lyft or Sidecar, to forgo paying for insurance. If a person signs up to become a driver, he says, and a TNC promises to cover his or her insurance when they’re driving for the company, drivers could forget their insurance only applies when they are on the clock when it comes time to renew their personal insurance.

In short, the bill seems to have been held up over concerns that TNC drivers, who use their own personal automobiles while on the clock, will simply forget they still need to purchase an individual auto policy.

If this concern is indeed motivating the filibuster, it seems misguided for two reasons. First, most TNC drivers work part time, and therefore likely own automobiles for personal use (57% of Uber drivers work less than 15 hours/week, and 86% work less than 35 hours/week.) Since these drivers own cars primarily to use themselves, it seems unlikely they’ll just forget to buy insurance once they start driving a few hours a day for a TNC. Second, to register your vehicle in Missouri, you need proof of insurance! It’s hard to understand why Missourians would forget to purchase (state-mandated) insurance just because they receive commercial coverage when driving for a TNC. It’s even harder to see how that fear would outweigh the potential benefits of sensible TNC regulations.

Proponents of SB 185 are still optimistic, but the future of free-market transportation reform is unclear. I remain hopeful that the policies embodied by SB 185 will eventually enable drivers to earn a living, help riders save money, and make it easier for all Missourians to get around. 

The post Can Legislation Make You Forget to Buy Insurance? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.