Susan Pendergrass speaks with Cory Koedel, director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute, about Missouri education policy following the 2026 legislative session. They discuss the governor’s A to F letter grade executive order, why literacy legislation failed to pass, leadership turmoil at DESE, Show-Me’s latest Report on the effects of open enrollment, the case for expanding charter schools in Missouri, and more.

The post Missouri’s Stalled Education Reforms with Cory Koedel appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Aaron Renn, author and consultant, and David Stokes, Director of Municipal Policy at the Show-Me Institute, about the recurring debate over whether the city of St. Louis should rejoin St. Louis County. They explore what city county mergers have actually accomplished in places like Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, and Lexington, why a full merger in St. Louis would be extraordinarily difficult to pull off, and whether the benefits would even outweigh the costs. They also discuss St. Louis’s demographic challenges, what the Pittsburgh model might offer as a path forward, the cultural barriers that make it hard to attract and retain people from outside the region, and more.

You can find Aaron’s work here.

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Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:05): Welcome back, Aaron Renn, to the podcast. So happy to have you and David Stokes, our own expert on cities and counties and all things municipal. I appreciate you coming on, Aaron. There have been murmurings around St. Louis again on a topic that we have revisited for probably a hundred years: should the city of St. Louis be a separate county from St. Louis County?

Before we get to that, I want to ask you something because I was reading the news this morning, and I know that you’ve written about city county mergers before, like cities that are kind of dying and then either pulling in parts of their closest suburbs to sort of make everything look better, broaden their tax base, make their crime numbers look better. I was reading something you wrote a year or two ago about that, and you said that Louisville is a failed example of that. Is that right, basically?

Aaron Renn (01:01): Yeah, I’m a little skeptical of how these things have worked out in practice.

Susan Pendergrass (01:05): Yeah, in terms of losing the flavor and the coolness of the city. Literally this morning I saw an article about how Louisville is having a renaissance and these young professionals are all moving there because they didn’t tear down all their beautiful old Victorian homes, so you can still get one for close to a million dollars. They’ve got a cool art scene and a bourbon scene. So it sounds like maybe Louisville did not lose its personal flavor in the merger. I would be curious to know what you think of that.

Aaron Renn (01:33): Well, I like to put St. Louis in context. I’m glad you mentioned Louisville because many of these river cities have similar characteristics. I like to look at St. Louis as well as three cities in the Ohio Valley: Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. All of them heavily German Catholic in their demographics. All of them are very geopolitically fragmented with many small tiny suburbs throughout. They all have very fragmented neighborhood systems as well, where everybody has a strong sense of neighborhood identity. Where you go to high school is a big social marker. They all have phenomenal collections of urban assets and great historic buildings. They all still have their own unique character in a country where that has sort of bled away.

Aaron Renn (02:31): And they also have curiously underperformed demographically and economically in terms of growth. They’re slow growth places. So one thing I always encourage people is to pan back the lens and don’t just look at St. Louis in isolation. Look at it in comparison or dialogue with some of these other places and see what you can learn from them.

Louisville is actually a quite troubled city in important ways. From a white collar employment perspective it’s doing well, from a blue collar perspective less so. It’s one of the 10 least educated major metros in the country. I don’t want to spend too much time on Louisville, but I want to talk about the city county merger, which is distinct from recombining the city and the county. This has been considered urban planning best practice for 30 or 40 years. There was a book written by David Rusk called Cities Without Suburbs. The idea is that cities that were able to expand their boundaries through either annexation or city county mergers were prospering, whilst cities that did not, like the Clevelands, the Cincinnatis, and the St. Louises, were struggling. So the idea is we need big box government.

Indianapolis, where I live now, had a city county merger in 1970. Louisville did a city county merger, I grew up near Louisville. Jacksonville, Florida, Lexington, Kentucky, and Nashville, Tennessee did as well. What I would say is a few things. Merger is not necessarily bad. For Indianapolis, merger did prevent the city from essentially going down the tubes in important ways. So it really was a win in important ways.

But it did not prevent the historic city from going into the exact same demographic decline as St. Louis. The historic city of Indianapolis has lost almost exactly the same share of its population since 1970 as St. Louis has. Secondly, these are very politically difficult to pull off. They take enormous effort. They often fail multiple times. Louisville had multiple failures.

The most precious resource is always management time and attention. Is this where you want to put all your political chips? And in order to get it passed politically, what happens invariably is that most entities are actually not consolidated. In Louisville, none of the existing incorporated suburban governments were in fact merged. In Indianapolis, the school districts weren’t merged.

This means you don’t necessarily get all of the benefits you think from consolidation, because many things are excluded. And then unlike a corporate merger, where there’s typically a lot of downsizing and cost rationalization, in city county mergers nobody ever loses their job and salaries and benefits might even be harmonized upward to the high watermark. So don’t expect it to save any money. Personally, city county merger might have some benefits for St. Louis. I’m not saying it would have no benefits, but in my opinion it’s not going to be a needle mover and most likely it would be extraordinarily politically difficult and uncertain to pull off.

Susan Pendergrass (06:00): Yeah, no question. It’s been very politically difficult. People don’t want to do it. However, we do have these little tiny school districts and police districts. We have, I don’t know, 28 911 systems. We have a lot of what looks like bureaucratic waste and red tape. To the extent that doesn’t get resolved in a merger, then what’s the point? But I do think, you know, we’ve been talking about the demographics of St. Louis. There were over 800,000 people in the city once. Now there are maybe 280,000 and declining, and we’re in the death spiral of more people dying than being born. We’ve been in that for a while. And I guess it brings up the question of what is St. Louis to do if we are in this death spiral? We’re not having the babies. We’re having fewer babies than we did 15 years ago. So school enrollment is only declining. What is the prescription in that situation?

I’ve been to Cincinnati quite a bit. They’re trying to get people downtown with sports stadiums. It doesn’t really work. Louisville has sports stadiums downtown. I don’t know if people really want to move down there. I don’t see it working in St. Louis. So what is a city in that situation to do?

Aaron Renn (07:18): It’s going to be challenging in a sense because your problems are a little over determined. St. Louis was once a regional capital city, much like a Dallas or an Atlanta or a Denver or a Minneapolis. And it lost a lot of those functions. Many of its headquarters have left. It used to have a lot of professional services firms like ad agencies that did business all over the country, not just for the local market. Now St. Louis, although it’s still bigger than Indianapolis, looks a lot more like an Indianapolis or a Columbus, Ohio, where you have fewer corporate headquarters and most of the service firms are just there to serve the local market. St. Louis has essentially shrunk a little bit in relative importance, and it’s hard to get that back.

The demographics are also quite difficult and create a situation where it’s hard to attract business when you have a shrinking labor force, weak demographic growth, and a weak ability to bring people in from the outside. So it’s a very complicated situation and I don’t think there’s any silver bullet for St. Louis.

Susan Pendergrass (08:39): That’s what I’m asking you for. You have the answers. What’s the silver bullet?

Aaron Renn (08:43): So here are the things I would look at if I were in St. Louis. One of the clear issues that affects all of these river cities is that their wonderful, unique local cultures come with a downside, which is an extreme parochialism that has two negative effects. One, it makes it difficult for the communities to cohesively work together, which I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. City-suburb divides tend to be bigger. In Indianapolis, regional leadership is mostly all on the same page about the big issues. Same with Columbus, Ohio. Secondly, it makes it very difficult to attract people from out of town because they come there and they can’t make friends, they can’t penetrate the social networks.

Susan Pendergrass (09:15): 100%, yes.

Aaron Renn (09:40): You hear it over and over again in places like St. Louis, Cleveland, even Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are some sayings there. If you want to make friends in Minnesota, go to kindergarten, because that’s when everybody makes their friends. Or Minnesotans will give you directions anywhere but their house. They’re never going to invite you over. St. Louis has that reputation. I don’t think it’s just a reputation. And I know you just had Ness Sandoval on.

Susan Pendergrass (09:53): Yeah.

Aaron Renn (10:08): He’s talking about you need to get better on migration. Migration isn’t going to improve if migrants are not going to be able to join the social networks here. And that’s not even just international migration, that’s domestic migrants. So I think that’s a huge issue for the city. Cultural issues are hard to solve, but maybe less intractable than infrastructure.

The other thing is looking at Pittsburgh as a sort of model. Pittsburgh hasn’t solved really most of its problems by any means, but it has been able to regenerate in the city a sort of high value economy around Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It’s done quite well. Many Silicon Valley firms have set up shop there. What’s happened in Pittsburgh, although it’s still a demographic decline story, is there’s been a demographic transition in the city. Pittsburgh went from one of the least educated cities in America to now one of the youngest and most educated. Part of it is old people moved and died off and young educated people replaced them. So the total number of people in the city was declining, but there was a churn happening underneath. And the same thing is already happening in St. Louis.

Susan Pendergrass (11:13): How did they do that?

Aaron Renn (11:33): College degree attainment in the city is now well north of 40%. So the people who live in the city of St. Louis are very educated. That demographic churn has raised educational attainment and thus incomes in the city a lot. Now Pittsburgh was different because it was an almost entirely white city. There’s a racial divide in St. Louis and gentrification concerns become more salient. But St. Louis is now an educated city. This is not an old post-industrial blue collar city. The city of St. Louis itself is very educated. And also being very small, it doesn’t necessarily need a massive change to move the needle. In Indianapolis we have a population of over 900,000. Moving that behemoth takes a lot. St. Louis now being smaller has a situation where there could be a big impact from lower numbers of things. So I think a knowledge economy built around Washington University and your medical centers has some possibilities, somewhat similar to Pittsburgh.

Susan Pendergrass (12:45): So much medical.

Aaron Renn (12:58): Carnegie Mellon’s engineering and computer science areas will be a little different. I might also look at Vanderbilt, what’s going on there? What are some peer schools you could watch to see what’s going on? But I think there are actually some reasons to think that the city of St. Louis, believe it or not, could be sort of turning a corner. It has now demographically renewed itself to a higher educational attainment state. Being small, it probably doesn’t have that much further to fall, and you can start building from there. Obviously there are governance challenges, but looking at the Pittsburgh model, studying similar complexes around peer schools, and addressing the culture issues is where I’d look.

David Stokes (13:33): Hopeful.

Susan Pendergrass (13:47): So as a spokesperson for St. Louis, what do you see for the future?

David Stokes (13:52): Well, I would be curious to get Aaron’s thoughts on that size question, about how the city of St. Louis has in fact gotten so small. It’s about 10% of the metro area. How does that affect the pros or cons of any type of a merger? These would not be a merger of equals. St. Louis County would almost subsume St. Louis City into it. How do you think that would affect things for better or worse?

Aaron Renn (14:28): Well, that was the critique of the Louisville merger by two academics at the University of Louisville. I mentioned the book Cities Without Suburbs. They wrote an academic paper called Suburbs Without a City, which basically said if the merger passed in Louisville, it would essentially mean the suburbs take over the city, not the city taking over the suburbs, because the old city of Louisville only had about 260,000 people and the suburbs would numerically dominate. The same thing would certainly happen in St. Louis. If there were a merger, suburban St. Louis County would control the city in essence.

Another consideration, and this is a Cincinnati issue, I interviewed about 15 years ago the mayor of Cincinnati, John Cranley. Here’s what he said, and I think this is an important point. He said, 30 years ago, city county merger was the thing because cities were in decline and you wanted to tap that suburban tax base to fund the city. But now it’s reversed. Now the cities are coming back and it’s the inner suburbs that are actually going down the tubes. And so in Cincinnati today, we have all the corporate headquarters, we have the universities and the medical centers, and we don’t have to share our tax revenue with anybody. If we were merged with the county government, we’d have to prop up all these failing suburbs. And so I think you’re in a similar situation in St. Louis, where the high value activity, not all of it is in the city of St. Louis because of Clayton and so on, but the St. Louis County suburbs are mostly places that are themselves on negative trajectories. Merging the city, which may be on the cusp of being able to bottom out and turn around, with all of these still declining inner suburban areas, might actually be an albatross around the city’s neck.

Susan Pendergrass (15:16): What would that mean?

David Stokes (16:37): I just think one of the differences between St. Louis and Cincinnati, and I don’t know the property tax base of Cincinnati, is that so much of the city of St. Louis is tax exempt right now. Between Washington University, Saint Louis University, and all the government entities, there’s just so much of it. I say that as somebody who supports property tax changes to make them pay something towards it. But I just don’t think the Cincinnati argument applies to the city of St. Louis right now. That property tax exemption part is a huge factor because the most growing, thriving part of it is the entire giant Barnes-WashU-Cortex complex, and the amount of property taxes they pay is miniscule.

Susan Pendergrass (16:38): Hmm.

Aaron Renn (17:26): Well, some of that is a planning issue. And I think the reality is, when you have a complex like that, are all these people going to move to St. Charles? Maybe not. I’ll tell you, I live in the suburb of Indianapolis named Carmel, and a lot of the hospitals and things have been opening facilities here. When these nonprofit hospitals come up here, we will not approve zoning changes for those hospitals unless they agree to make payments in lieu of taxes. You want to come up here and you want a zoning change, you’re going to have to pay. We were actually quite prescient in that one of the local hospital chains opened a for-profit hospital. As part of the approval deal, we said, if you ever convert to nonprofit status, you will continue paying property taxes. And we did that.

So I think there probably is leverage from the city over some of these entities. You don’t have a lot of leverage over a corporation deciding where to put their office, but that’s not a tax exempt situation. The stuff at Cortex is probably not going to leave if you make them pay a little money the next time they come to you for a zoning approval. I think you need to start looking at how to get more money out of these entities that are nonprofits in name only. These universities and hospitals are effectively gigantic hedge funds. Their executives are extremely well compensated and billions of dollars are flowing through there. Undoubtedly the better solution there is to figure out how to tax them rather than figure out how to tax the soon-to-be-dead mall in the suburb over the border.

David Stokes (19:24): Well, yeah, and that’s sort of the trade off, unfortunately, is that they do pay earnings tax. The employees, many of them very highly compensated, pay the earnings tax. And that’s what makes the city more dependent on local income taxes, not less, because they’re either tax exempt or in the case of Cortex, have tax abatements that make them essentially tax exempt.

Susan Pendergrass (19:25): We do have earnings taxes, right? So the folks who work there have to pay an earnings tax.

Aaron Renn (19:53): Yeah. Again, I don’t know exactly the fiscal architecture there. But I would say you don’t want to do a merger simply to do a tax dollar grab. The lesson of Indianapolis is we did that. We grabbed suburban tax dollars and we used it to rebuild our downtown successfully. But here we are 50 years later, and now we have enormous tracts of decayed suburbia that are an enormous problem. Our entire core county is now in a sense the inner city. We have big challenges because we were not able to invest in ways that allow those suburban areas to retain their allure over the long term.

And I’m not saying that’s impossible, but any short term juice you get, cities always rise and fall. Core cities have proven more resilient and more able to regenerate themselves than suburbs. Part of it is because state governments cannot afford to let their state’s largest city or major urban center go down the tubes.

Susan Pendergrass (21:06): Yeah.

Aaron Renn (21:16): Missouri cannot let St. Louis and Kansas City implode. Michigan cannot just write off Detroit and say who cares. But these suburban areas have proven a lot tougher to save. We don’t have a good model. We’ve spent decades thinking about how to rebuild cities and build districts. There are certain things you can pull off in a city around conventions, civic events, gathering spaces, museums, and government that are very hard to translate to suburban settings. So there’s not a great playbook, especially in declining markets, for renewing suburbs. The playbook for suburban renewal, if you want to call it that, is places like Carmel, Indiana, which are growing and affluent, and therefore can build large mixed use centers, new urbanist developments, trails, and parks. The suburbs of St. Louis County are probably tremendously deficient in infrastructure as we would understand it today.

So again, there may actually be some benefits in having St. Louis City rejoin the county in a sense, because then the county functions are spread and amortized across a larger population.

Susan Pendergrass (22:45): It would immediately improve our murder rate because we would be mixing it in.

Aaron Renn (22:48): Yeah, there is some of that. The murder rate is an artifact of the size of the city more than anything. There are places in Chicago with higher murder rates. A former colleague of mine at the Manhattan Institute, Rafael Mangual, did an analysis of Chicago. He said there are areas on the South Side of Chicago that are larger and have more people than St. Louis with far higher murder rates than St. Louis.

Susan Pendergrass (22:56): We get called out because of the small denominator.

Aaron Renn (23:17): And so there is that. The other thing is Chicago is a good example. New York City was essentially a city county merger. In 1898, the five counties that are the five boroughs of New York were consolidated into one city. Philadelphia was also a city county consolidation from the 19th century. But what happens when you create a very large city of say a million people or more is you really have to scale up your government. You have to have a government that operates at that scale.

What happened with Indianapolis was we merged city and county government, but we didn’t really have a government that could effectively manage this new larger territory. It never built out the infrastructure in the suburbs. In New York, the Bronx has subways, great parks, everything built out with proper infrastructure, because it was part of New York and New York had to expand governance to become a city of eight million. Chicago got big in the 19th century and built a city government that could run a city of three million people. And some of the stuff that gets critiqued there, for example, is a lot of city services were organized by ward or city council district. There are 50 city council districts and every city councilor is sort of a little mini mayor of their district. The alderman essentially has veto power over any zoning changes. It’s called aldermanic privilege. So there are a lot of constraints there.

But if it’s just one mayor and one city council trying to think about a huge city of 77 neighborhoods and three million people, they can’t keep that much in their head. All they can think about is downtown. And that’s what happened in Indianapolis. The mayor and city council can really only think about downtown. We should have built out structures in townships throughout the city so that you had leadership focused on that area and money focused on that area. That’s what made the suburbs work really well. A suburb like Carmel is basically township sized. We have 100,000 people, big enough to do things, but not so big that our mayor and council can’t keep the whole city in their head and plan and manage the whole city.

So if you merge with the county government, you’re going to have to create an entirely new government structure that allows you to essentially manage every sub area of the whole thing and bring it all up to a standard of services. That’s the other thing they often did in Louisville and Nashville. They merge, but they have a two tier service system where there’s an urban services district for the old city which gets more services, and then the others get less. They didn’t do that in New York. There’s one standard of service in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Chicago. So if you can’t commit to a single standard of service, you’re basically creating a bogus merger in my opinion. If you’re going to do a merger, you need to obliterate every government and entity in St. Louis County and city, merge them all into one with one standard. That’s not going to happen.

Susan Pendergrass (26:35): That’s not going to happen. What do you think, David?

David Stokes (26:37): Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Aaron Renn (26:43): So you end up with a lot of problems. Louisville didn’t merge any fire departments. Imagine a city that doesn’t have a consolidated fire department. Imagine a city without a single police department. That was actually Indianapolis. When we merged, the Indianapolis Police Department still patrolled the old city, but the new parts of the city that were consolidated in from the county were still controlled by the sheriff.

Susan Pendergrass (27:13): That is 100% what would happen in St. Louis. Everyone would retain their school system and their police department and their fire department. I lived for a long time in Fairfax County, Virginia, which is a single county government. It’s massive, 150,000 students in their school system. It seems to function with a single police department and fire department. But I don’t think you can backwards engineer that into a place that for hundreds of years has been operating as it has been operating.

Aaron Renn (27:43): Lexington, Kentucky worked pretty well because one, the schools were already consolidated, as in the South it’s typically county school districts. Secondly, there were no other government entities, no township governments, no other incorporated municipalities. So it merged everything. And they were sort of able to solve the urban services district issue because the outer areas of Fayette County were horse farms. They actually put in a kind of green belt rule, you can’t develop out there, because they wanted to protect these scenic landscapes. So there was actually a good reason to treat that differently, because it was a very unique American landscape. Lexington, I think, was pretty successful.

Susan Pendergrass (28:15): They are. I appreciate it when I drive across Route 64.

Aaron Renn (28:39): Lexington was pretty successful and wasn’t especially controversial when they did it, in part because there weren’t all these entrenched interests like there are in other places. If you look at places that did the mergers, they weren’t the Cincinnatis and Pittsburghs. They’ve been talking about consolidation in Pittsburgh forever. It was very hard. And Louisville did it, but it was one of the least consolidated so-called consolidated governments. What the Louisville merger functionally did was dissolve the city of Louisville and reorganize county government. The county government now has a mayor and a council instead of the old fiscal court with the judge executive and all that.

Susan Pendergrass (29:21): That’s kind of what would happen in St. Louis, right?

Aaron Renn (29:36): That’s essentially what they did. They basically dissolved the city and the county government was reorganized, but nothing was merged.

Susan Pendergrass (29:43): Did you have a question?

David Stokes (29:45): I want to get back to the fire district point. We’re talking about why this would be so hard. There’s actually a law in St. Louis that only applies in St. Louis County that makes it impossible to consolidate fire districts. Even if a modest mid-sized suburb annexes an unincorporated part of town, they’re not allowed to provide fire services to that new annexed area, or they can, but they have to pay so much to the old unincorporated fire district that it makes it impossible to do so. That’s just one example of how even if you wanted a full scale merger, it would just be impossible to actually carry through.

Susan Pendergrass (30:34): Why do you think people float this idea, David? Why does it come back every couple of years?

David Stokes (30:38): You know, it’s the old line. I remember a study I read about Pittsburgh and St. Louis many years ago. The question was, are the St. Louis and Pittsburgh areas really inefficient with all the fragmented government? And the conclusion was, well, you would never design a metro area like this, but they’ve both made it work over the last century better than you would think. The conclusion was that St. Louis and Pittsburgh aren’t actually as inefficient as you might assume when you run the numbers.

I think people have trouble accepting that. People look at so many small municipalities, many of them dysfunctional, many of them until recent times funded themselves primarily with traffic tickets, which is a terrible way to fund local government, and that’s not even an exaggeration. And there’s just this fundamental belief that if you can just plan it better you’ll create a better place. I just think it fails.

One of the reasons it would fail, going back to what Aaron led this conversation off with, is that if St. Louis County and St. Louis City joined together, they’re not actually going to lay any government employees off to save any money. St. Louis City government is not going to fire city employees. It’s never going to happen. So you’re not going to save any money and it’s all just going to collapse.

Aaron Renn (32:12): Yeah, New York City and large governments are not more efficient.

I look at it and say, look, I think merger is a solution for failed states, if you want to call them that, in the St. Louis suburbs. Take some micro-suburb that’s a complete scam or is bankrupt and merge it in with its neighbor. Do some consolidation like that, that probably needs to be led by state government, almost like a receivership sort of thing. That’s just kind of good government as you work through it. But I just don’t think the benefits you would gain from trying to do a complete governmental merger of St. Louis City with St. Louis County would outweigh the opportunity cost of how much time and effort you spend on it, when you could be spending that on other things that I think will actually move the needle more.

The downsides are arguably as high as the upsides. There’s no guarantee it’s even net positive in this environment. The time to have merged was when Indianapolis did it in 1970, not in 2026. Nashville did it in the 60s. Jacksonville did it a long time ago.

And then I think it doesn’t fix the fundamental issues around the culture. You’ve got to take a hard look at that and say, it’s maybe very difficult to change. The idea that people who aren’t from here have to be able to move here and get connected and feel like they belong in the city. There’s a couple we know who lived in St. Louis. The wife taught in St. Louis public schools. They’re big urban people. The husband was from St. Louis, and they moved here to Carmel, Indiana.

Susan Pendergrass (33:47): Tell me more about that.

Aaron Renn (34:10): Basically they said, man, people are just so much friendlier here. They make better eye contact, they engage more. It’s just so much more welcoming than it was in St. Louis, even though they were actually in a sense connected because the husband was from there.

So when even people who lived in St. Louis and liked it notice a difference when they leave, that is a killer when you’re already struggling demographically. I had a guy who owned a business in Cleveland who said to me one time, I learned the hard way never to recruit anyone from out of town to work for my company unless that person or their spouse is from Cleveland, because otherwise they will never stay. When that’s where you are as a place, that is just rough. I think that is one of the killers for these river cities.

Susan Pendergrass (35:16): Yeah, what’s the fix for that? I don’t know what the fix is.

Aaron Renn (35:38): I think the optimistic case for St. Louis, and I actually tweeted this a year or two ago, is that St. Louis City educational attainment is really high now. In a sense, it’s a small, highly educated city that is probably going to continue growing more educated. So I think the Pittsburgh option looks viable in St. Louis.

Susan Pendergrass (36:00): And certainly great medical care. I know that the average age is getting older in St. Louis. I think within 10 years, one in four people will be over the age of 65. But we also have an Alzheimer’s research center and access to medical care, which as you get older gets more important. I do think there’s an opportunity to lean in to the medical services that are available, as the country as a whole gets older. I think St. Louis looks more attractive for that reason. So I think you’re right that with universities and medical centers, there’s an opportunity.

Aaron Renn (36:35): Yeah, I think if America’s demographics keep on this trend, a lot of other places are going to get to where St. Louis is. And the thing to be careful of is that when you’re in a declining market, that often prompts centralization of activity and population. What happened with Japan is that once Japan’s population started falling, everybody started moving to Tokyo. It’s Tokyo and a handful of other cities where everything is concentrated, and they literally have ghost towns there.

I don’t think it’s any accident that Indianapolis’ growth really took off once the Rust Belt era and deindustrialization hit the state. Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio have grown in large measure through drawing people out of the rest of the state as those states declined. Huge numbers of people move from Cleveland to Columbus every year.

Missouri is a little different than that. One of your challenges is that St. Louis does not draw people from rural Missouri. When I looked at the data, it’s not like there’s a massive flow into St. Louis from the rest of the state. So you don’t have that siphon bringing people in.

Susan Pendergrass (37:55): There are public safety issues around that, but yes.

Aaron Renn (38:00): And the issue we have is that we’ve now eaten our seed corn. There’s not going to be next generations of children in the towns I grew up in in rural Indiana to move to Indianapolis anymore. The cohort sizes are going to be smaller. So that pump, even Tokyo is declining now in population. That siphon is draining the water table. We can only rely on that so long.

But I think this is the risk for St. Louis in that kind of environment. People with opportunity might avoid or flee St. Louis and go to Austin, Texas or Nashville. They go to the handful of places in America that are really still growing. That’s a threat even for Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio. In a declining market, it’s very hard to get people to want to come to a shrinking city because the opportunity space is shrinking. St. Louis’s opportunity space has been shrinking because you’re losing corporate headquarters and your working age population is declining. That dynamic is really going to be a challenge. But within that, the city of St. Louis might end up doing okay. Again, being small actually helps it here.

Susan Pendergrass (39:25): Any closing thoughts on that, David?

David Stokes (39:27): Just that the part of Missouri that is definitely still growing, and that probably is attracting those young rural people who are moving to a city, is going into southwest Missouri, the Springfield-Branson area. That’s absolutely the growing part of the state. And even Kansas City is growing certainly more than St. Louis is.

Aaron Renn (39:48): Yeah, it’s not a culturally cohesive state. Springfield and that area are definitely growing, and growing despite the fact that they have nowhere close to the urban assets of a St. Louis. It’s interesting to watch, and we’ll just have to see what happens.

Susan Pendergrass (40:05): It is. I think about it a lot. I’ve been talking about this in terms of school enrollment for years and years, where you could see the biggest kindergarten cohort was after the Great Recession of 2009. You know that that’s the biggest kindergarten cohort for the last 15, 16, 17 years. We do nothing but build schools and hire teachers. We are slow to catch on to these things happening. But I think your perspective is certainly very interesting. On the question of the merger, it’s not worth the cost for whatever benefits there might be. But it still gets talked about, so I appreciate you coming and giving us your thoughts on it. Maybe we’ll have to have you back to talk about it again.

David Stokes (41:02): And Aaron, I want you to come back. I want to find out how we get more roundabouts in Missouri. I love roundabouts. I go to Carmel it seems like once a year for these gigantic youth sports tournaments up at Westfield, just a little bit north of you. My kids’ sports take me there. And I love the roundabouts. You cannot get enough of them.

Aaron Renn (41:09): I’d love to talk about that. My favorite topic.

Aaron Renn (41:24): Yeah, it’s great. We hardly ever have to stop. There are barely any stoplights or stop signs left in our city. It’s amazing. We’re one of the few growing places in America where traffic is better today than it was 20 years ago.

Susan Pendergrass (41:32): They’re awesome.

David Stokes (41:45): People don’t realize how good that is for air quality and everything. You just keep moving along, not stop and start. We need 100 times more roundabouts in this area.

Susan Pendergrass (41:55): Are you pretending that people stop at stop signs in St. Louis? Because let’s be honest, people don’t stop at stop signs.

David Stokes (42:00): Well, they roll them, but it’s still wrong when they roll them. Maybe all the people blowing red lights on Kings Highway at 50 miles an hour are just being environmentally conscious. I need to give them more of the benefit of the doubt, I guess.

Susan Pendergrass (42:12): That’s exactly right. All right, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Aaron Renn (42:19): Thank you.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post The St. Louis City-County Merger with Aaron Renn and David Stokes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Elections and inaugurations are a time for reflection and a recommitment to principles. As Missouri prepares for the new administration of Mike Kehoe, it’s worthwhile to consider the performance of his predecessors—especially on issues relating to fiscal management of taxpayer resources.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian-minded think tank based in Washington, DC, rates the fiscal performance of governors. The good news is that Governor Mike Parson is not the worst governor in the United States, but he’s the worst one who claims to care about limited government.

Cato has issued its report every two years since 1992. The report methodology, available online here, issues a letter grade based on each governor’s success at restraining spending and tax increases. Parson earned a D grade in 2024. Author Chris Edwards wrote, “Parson has been a tax reformer, but he has dropped the ball on spending control. The general fund budget has jumped from $10.5 billion in 2022 to an expected $15.6 billion in 2025, a 49 percent increase in just three years.”

The D grade placed Parson 40th of the 48 governors rated. Florida governor Ron DeSantis was ranked 19th and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin came in 15th. Parson was closer to Minnesota governor and recent vice-presidential caudate Tim Walz, who came in last. Of Missouri’s neighbors, governors of Iowa, Nebraska, and Arkansas each earned an A grade, ranking 1st, 2nd and 4th respectively. Even Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker and California’s Gavin Newsom outperformed Parson, placing 32nd and 35th respectively.

If one uses Republican party identification to denote a preference for small government and low taxes—and that is arguable these days—Parson’s 40th-place ranking stands out even more. It made him the worst-scoring Republican in the nation. And 2024’s score is not a fluke; Parson scored a D in 2022 and a C in 2020.

Parson doesn’t just compare poorly to other current governors; he scored poorly compared to past Missouri governors. Parson’s letter grades surpass only those of Mel Carnahan (scoring D, D and F) and Robert Holden (F). Parson even seems to score worse than Jay Nixon, whose scores were B, C, D, and D. (If you’re wondering, Matt Blunt was the best scoring governor since 1992, earning Missouri’s only A in 2006 and a B in 2008.)

Note that the report’s methodology changed for the 2008 report but has remained the same since. Previous iterations relied on many more variables, but the outcomes are unlikely to have been much different.

Missouri’s total spending has practically doubled in the last five years, including not just the general fund, but other dedicated state funds and federal money. That total spending jumped from $27 billion in 2019 after Parson’s first year in office to a little more than $50 billion for 2025. It now costs three times as much to run Missouri as it did in the Carnahan and Holden administrations!

Parson’s profligacy stems from the decisions he’s made since the federal government’s COVID relief funds flooded Missouri’s budget with billions of dollars in one-time cash. States were given considerable discretion on how to use much of the relief funding, not to mention the state tax dollars the federal cash freed up for other uses. Unfortunately, Parson, with the help of Missouri’s General Assembly, fell victim to the allure of so-called free money.

Today, Missouri’s budget is littered with what were once temporary initiatives that never ended and now receive permanent funding. Or, perhaps worse, formerly federal obligations that are now borne by state taxpayers.

Key among these includes Parson’s decision to use state funds to maintain the higher childcare subsidies the federal government subsidized during the COVID pandemic, now costing state taxpayers at least $70 million annually. Parson also failed to meaningfully manage Medicaid spending. Missouri’s lackadaisical approach to checking program recipient eligibility, after the federal government lifted its COVID-era ban on the practice, has likely cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars thus far.

In addition, Parson increased state employee pay by 7.5% plus an additional 3.2% cost of living increase last year. These raises were paid for with a temporary influx of state funds, but because the increased pay was not made commensurate with employee reductions, the higher salaries will require new permanent funding sources and will increase the obligations of the already underfunded state pension system.

Governor-elect Kehoe has a difficult job ahead of him administering government and working to attract more families and employers to the Show-Me State. Unfortunately, his predecessor has done him—and the people of Missouri—a great disservice by failing to properly manage taxpayer funds.

The post Missouri Must Do Better at Controlling Spending appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But why has it been so difficult to pass open enrollment?

Apparently many legislators (particularly those in rural areas) are fearful that students would leave their school districts given the opportunity. It’s true that there are students who would change their schools. Some students will transfer out, and some students will transfer in. A mass exodus, however, is unlikely.

Parents often have sentimental attachments to the place they grew up in—they want their children to be able to experience all the same things they did. Strong attachments can help strengthen the community that supports the district. But these sentiments aren’t shared by everyone. Maybe someone is being bullied or struggling because the class size isn’t right for them. Or maybe families would prefer a five-day school week instead of four. Wouldn’t school districts improve if everyone who was there wanted to be there?

A professional advocate for “Rural School Advocates of Iowa” argued that open enrollment had bolstered rural districts in the state, as many students prefer smaller class sizes and sports programs that give them a better chance to get playing time. Perhaps additional studies on the effect of open enrollment on consolidation rates and enrollment trends could be useful in further addressing this concern.

There have also been reservations about the actual process of districts accepting students. Will districts only accept the best students from other districts? The best version of an open enrollment policy includes mandatory open enrollment. That means districts are not allowed to pick and choose students.

But what about special education students? If districts are required to accept all students, what if a district does not have special education staff on hand—will it be forced to make room?

There are already special education students in Missouri who live in districts without adequate resources to teach them. With open enrollment, I believe parents with special needs students would be more likely to choose a district with an adequate special education program.

As I was researching viewpoints on this issue, I came across an interesting story. A superintendent from a district in Minnesota was lamenting the lengths the district had to go to in order to retain students. The district created a new program that helps students with their post-graduation careers and allows them to earn certificates when they graduate.

Isn’t this what competition is supposed to do? Competition forced this district to create a new program that helps students with their careers after graduation. The desire to attract students to districts breeds innovation. Open enrollment can improve schools and increase options for students and families. Next year, I hope it finds the momentum it needs.

The post One Education Policy That Could Use Some Momentum for Next Year appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The nonprofit yes. every. kid. released a report that discusses how allowing non-residential students (those outside the district) access to individual classes and extracurriculars could effectively complement open enrollment. Whereas open enrollment focuses on full-time transfers, this complementary policy would allow students to remain in their school and enroll part-time in individual classes—maximizing flexibility. According to the report, eight states* allow students to enroll in classes outside of their current school.  In these states, students in a smaller rural district could enroll in physics, AP calculus, or even a music program in another district if their school does not have these classes or programs available. If open enrollment finally gets its long-needed day in Missouri, this policy could create additional opportunities for families across the state.

First, how could this benefit students?

Well, the answer is pretty obvious—more classes and more opportunities to help every kid in our state!

Second, why would a school with no physics program want its own students to participate?

The number one reason is that districts should care about their students. Competition can be cooperative, and districts should all be on the same team to best educate the students of Missouri. I chose physics as my example subject because there is a legitimate shortage of qualified physics teachers. These sending districts should want every student in their district to succeed, and many simply cannot provide classes in valuable subjects. Additionally, allowing your students to participate would lower their incentive to leave. If Johnny wants to study physics in college, but your district does not have it, he may be forced to leave your district by moving or enrolling in a private school.

Third, why would a receiving school share its resources?

The freeloading problem goes like this: “This policy would incentivize bad schools to not expand or offer new programs because they can simply mooch off our resources (and tax levies).” In Arizona, one of the states that employs this policy, part-time students (those which enroll in individual classes at different schools) are funded by the state at one fourth, one half, or three fourths of a full-time student—depending on how many classes they are taking. Therefore, state funding follows the student. Missouri does not have backpack funding like Arizona does (which we need), but a similar policy could be implemented to compensate receiving districts. Additionally, if you properly paired this policy with open enrollment, these classes could attract students. It would go both ways, as many students would stay in their home district and take individual courses elsewhere so they would not have to transfer away from their friends, sports teams, or other extracurriculars.

Receiving districts should care about all the students in our state trying to receive the best education they can. I can understand why one might take issue with another district benefitting from your district’s resources, but the most important thing is doing what works best for students. One may not think it is “fair,” but is it “fair” that a student cannot learn physics just because they live within arbitrary boundaries? Petty jealousies over dollars and cents should not stand in the way of opportunities for children across the state.

*Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Utah, and Wisconsin (all these states have open enrollment)

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HB 253 is one of the open enrollment bills filed this session and it allows Missouri families to choose a public school other than the one assigned to them based on their address. They can choose a school within their home district or in a different district, provided that the school has an open seat for them. While this bill has many shortcomings, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, unlike the open enrollment laws in 23 other states, HB 253 lets districts opt out of accepting nonresident students. And while many districts may decide to opt out initially, I’m hopeful that as Missourians get used to trusting parents, most districts will see the benefit of working to attract students. Given that every public school district in St. Louis has experienced declining enrollment in the last few years, those that sit this out will do so at their folly.

The bill was amended so that districts can limit the number of transfers out to three percent of the prior year’s enrollment. This is a nice financial guardrail, districts can use the highest of the last four year’s enrollment for state funding anyway. This gives them several years before they feel any financial pain from exiting students.

Minnesota has had a mandatory open enrollment law since 1989. Remember 1989? George H.W. Bush was sworn in as president and Rain Man won best picture. This is not a new idea. The scary and paradoxical scenario laid out by opponents of the bill that our beloved rural high schools that are the hearts of their communities will also experience heavy student losses hasn’t happened in Minnesota or Wisconsin or Ohio or any other state that has had open enrollment for decades.

When the tanned and rested legislature returns it will be up to the Senate to make open enrollment a reality for Missouri families. I look forward to seeing it happen.

The post To the Beach! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once upon a time (in 2008), Missouri had the lowest electricity prices in the Midwest at 6.84 cents per kilowatt hour, while our friends in Illinois paid the highest electricity prices in the region at 9.26 cents per kilowatt hour. (The Midwest is defined as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Missouri.) Now, as of data from 2019 (the most recent data available), Illinoisans pay less than Missourians do (9.56 cents versus 9.68 cents) and have the second-lowest electricity prices in the Midwest, while Missouri’s electricity prices rose to the middle of the pack in the Midwest.

Moreover, when taking inflation into account, Illinois’ real electric prices decreased 13 percent, while Missouri’s increased by 19 percent—the third-fastest increase in the country between 2008 and 2019.

What gives?

The largest difference between electricity markets in Missouri and Illinois is that Illinois allows customers to choose between competing electric service providers, whereas Missouri still operates on a century-old monopoly model. In Illinois, customers have more than 150 electric service providers to choose from. Options for plans include fixed-rate, variable pricing, prepaid, or green energy plans. The pressures of competition ensure that electric providers operate more efficiently and are more responsive to customers.

In contrast, Missourians, wherever they live, have only one choice for an electric service provider—their government-sanctioned and regulated monopoly. Because there’s no competition, monopoly utilities don’t have an incentive to increase efficiency and don’t fear losing any business.

As the electricity price data above show, one of these systems has been working better, and it’s not Missouri’s. Lower electric prices mean households have more money left over for other needs. It also creates a more attractive environment for businesses. Missouri lawmakers can learn something from Illinois—pursuing competitive reforms to Missouri’s electricity market could be worthwhile.

The post Want Better Electricity Prices? Be More Like Illinois appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The study examined four different rural charter schools in New Mexico, Minnesota, Florida and Arizona and described the factors that contributed to their success.

According to the researchers, a close connection to the community and the ability to fill an academic need was critical to the success of the charter schools they studied. For example, the Glacial Hills Elementary charter school in Minnesota started up after the local district school closed in 2005 due to issues with finances and declining enrollment. Opening a charter school meant that students had a local educational option instead of having to travel an hour each day to the nearest school.

In a rural community in Florida, families were quickly moving out of the local school system or enrolling in private schools for a quality education, so Crossroads Academy opened to provide a local, rigorous public education for students.

I bet there are Missouri families who would like to shorten their child’s daily commute to school or have a quality academic option nearby. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 61 percent of Missouri’s rural school districts have experienced a decline in enrollment from 2010 to 2016. This is part of a larger migration trend in Missouri, but those who remain in rural areas still deserve a quality education. The Minnesota and Florida schools mentioned above show how charter schools can thrive in rural areas with declining enrollment.

The researchers also produced a website that has more in-depth analysis on their findings, and it’s worth a look for more information on each charter school.

Other states are leading the way in providing quality options for rural students. Why doesn’t Missouri do the same?  

The post Charter Schools Can Fill the Void in Rural Areas appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

An article in EducationNext discussed recent research on transportation methods in cities where many students exercise choice. The article describes how Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and Washington D.C. are finding ways to provide transportation to students who attend a school of choice. It also found that in most cases, students don’t have long commutes. 

In some cities, like New Orleans and New York, the district simply provides students with transportation, including students who choose their schools. Washington D.C. has school district-provided transportation or free access to public transportation for all students. Denver provides students who exercise choice with a free shuttle-bus service. And many individual charter schools will provide transportation, like in Detroit.

More places than those mentioned in the study are creating ways to help students with transportation. Low-income families in Minnesota can qualify for transportation cost reimbursements if their child enrolls in a charter school or open enrollment in the local district. Businesses are also stepping in, as parents and school districts have connected with rideshare programs, tailored specifically to get students to and from school.

And in Missouri, where charter schools are eligible for state transportation aid, these schools can work with the local district or use another contractor to arrange transportation.

Concern over transportation shouldn’t determine where students go to school. Transportation is a means to an end and shouldn’t prevent students from attending the school of their choice.

The post But How Will They Get to School? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Currently, Missouri requires licenses for 240 occupations, 37 of which are for low- to moderate-income jobs. Many licensing boards list “good character” or not having committed “any offense involving moral turpitude” as a requirement for applicants or renewal of licenses. While it may make sense to prohibit some ex-offenders from obtaining a license, these vague statements shut out almost anyone with a criminal record regardless of the nature of their offense, the time that has lapsed since they served their time, or if they have successfully completed rehabilitation. It also precludes an employer from exercising its discretion in determining a person’s fitness for a position.

On one hand, it seems wise to refuse licenses in certain cases—say someone with a history of substance abuse or drug dealing applying for a pharmacy technician license. On the other hand, blanket bans of ex-offenders create obstacles to getting jobs that may have no connection with the crime committed and make it more likely that the offender will eventually return to prison. Other states—including Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, and Tennessee—have shown there is a better way forward that strikes the balance between safety and second chances.

Instead of allowing licensing boards to have wholesale bans on those with criminal records, Fresh Start Legislation would require that boards list specific crimes that are directly related to the occupation in question and consider factors such as time passed since the last conviction and the nature of the offense. .

Under Fresh Start laws, boards may only outright deny applicants if they have a conviction within the last five years or if the conviction was for a violent or sexual crime. This means more dangerous criminals and repeat offenders would still be able to be screened out. But if someone has an older conviction for a nonviolent crime and has remained crime free since being released, their application must be considered and they are allowed to appeal the decision if denied.

Missouri’s Governor recently mentioned the need for better prisoner education so prisoners can be released ready to enter the workforce. But how much can educational programs accomplish if ex-offenders are being automatically shut out of hundreds of occupations? By removing unnecessary obstacles to ex-offenders leaving prison, a Fresh Start law would be a good first step to help these people get jobs and fully reintegrate into their communities. 

The post Giving Ex-Offenders a Fresh Start When Looking for a Job: Part Two appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Charter schools are public schools, but instead of being governed by a local school board, they are governed by a document—their charter—that lays out how the school will operate and the metrics by which its performance will be judged. The charter is granted to the group of individuals who seek to open and run the school, and it has an expiration date of three to five years, at which point it needs to be renewed or the school is closed. The charter is awarded by an authorizer, or sponsor, who is responsible for making sure that the school stays on track, both academically and financially, and who makes the renewal or closure recommendation.

A little history might be helpful in understanding how the charter school movement began. It started in the late 1980s as an idea to let teachers, parents, or community leaders open and run a public school outside of district oversight. Credit for the idea usually goes to Al Shanker—head of one of the two major teacher’s unions in the United States. In 1988, Shanker offered an idea for reinvigorating public education that was inspired by a visit to a school in Cologne, Germany the prior year. He argued that we should allow teachers to create innovative, autonomous public schools, and that these chartered schools would serve as laboratories from which effective ideas could be replicated.

Around the same time, political economists John Chubb and Terry Moe argued that the institutional structure of public education wasn’t working. they found that autonomy was the one indispensable requirement for an effective school. And, they concluded, the existing structure of public education limits and undermines school autonomy. In their book Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, Chubb and Moe proposed building an entirely new structure for public education that would withdraw authority from existing institutions and place it directly in the hands of schools, parents, and students. School districts could continue to operate their existing schools, but they would have no authority over the “chartered” public schools.

In 1991, bipartisan support for Al Shanker’s idea led to the passage of the first charter school law in Minnesota. The law was groundbreaking, and in 1992 eight chartered public schools opened in Minnesota that were autonomous, student-centered, results-oriented, and designed and run by teachers. The following year California followed suit. At the start of the 2017–18 school year, there were over 7,000 charter schools in 42 states plus the District of Columbia, serving nearly 3.2 million students. Charter schools now represent seven percent of all public schools and enroll six percent of public school students. Today, one in five public school students attends school in a district with at least 10 percent of its students in charter schools.

The post Charter Schools 101: What Is a Charter School? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Open collective bargaining.

Open collective bargaining would allow the public to attend meetings where government bodies are negotiating collective bargaining agreements with unions to ensure that tax dollars are being spent wisely. Openness in public affairs empowers citizens to hold their government representatives accountable. The public is directly affected by policies set during collective bargaining; citizens therefore have a right to be present during such meetings. An open collective bargaining rule would not prohibit the public agency from discussing and formulating its bargaining positions in executive session.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas all require contract negotiations to be open.

THE OPPORTUNITY: A transparent negotiating process will enable the public to hold government accountable in its dealings with public employee unions and help ensure that the agreements reached between the two parties are in the interest of everyone instead of just a select group of employees.

KEY POINTS

• Open collective bargaining gives citizens the opportunity to attend union negotiations with government bodies and help ensure that tax dollars are spent responsibly.
• Missouri’s Sunshine Law allows government bodies to close meetings to the public if they relate to a negotiated contract, even though there is no compelling reason why negotiations between a union and a public body should be held in secret.
• Government unions can make campaign contributions and support candidates that they will potentially bargain with after election. This advantage makes it especially important that the public be aware of how the government and public employee unions interact.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Video: Government Unions: Restoring Accountability

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Open Collective Bargaining appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unsurprisingly, parents are welcoming more control over their children’s education. Marguerite Mingus, a mother of four in Minneapolis, wrote a powerful article on school choice; all of it is worth reading, but this paragraph is particularly striking:

I made the intentional choice—and continue to make the choice every day—to put my children first. I put my children ahead of what is convenient for me, ahead of what would be best for the district’s budget and ahead of what other parents whose kids do just fine in their neighborhood schools think I should do.

State money flows to the school of the student’s choice, and away from the school the student leaves—putting pressure on some districts that are losing students to other districts or charter schools. But as the editorial board of the StarTribune, the largest newspaper in Minnesota, noted, this situation presents a great opportunity for traditional public schools:

By popular demand, school options are likely here to stay. Given that reality, traditional public schools should do more to understand what their communities want and need. That starts with improving academic performance to retain and attract more students. In some cases, it means getting a better handle on school discipline and safety. And traditional schools should find ways to work cooperatively—both in programs and financially—with charters and other districts to offer the best, most effective programs for kids.

More school choice does not mean the end of traditional public schools; rather, public schools can and should be an important part of a diverse schooling system that better meets the needs of students. Here in Missouri, some healthy competition would improve our public schools and, more importantly, help ensure that every student in the state has the opportunity to attend a school that works best for them.

It would be hard to come up with a better endorsement of school choice than these two quotations. Parents in Minnesota have been given more control over their children’s education, and they intend to keep it. Is there any reason to think that parents in Missouri wouldn’t feel the same way? 

The post Minnesota Is Embracing School Choice-Missouri Should, Too appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The chart below plots the average annual growth rate for each of the 50 states and for the United States as whole for the period 1997 through 2015. The good news is that Missouri’s average annual growth rate increased from 0.93 percent when computed over the 1997 through 2014 period to 1.02 percent when computed over the 1997 through 2015 period. Missouri reported a 1.29 percent growth rate in its real GDP between 2014 and 2015. No one really jumps for joy when growth rates are reported at 1.3 percent for a year; however, Missouri did manage to stagger its way one rung up the ladder, from 49th-fastest to 48th-fastest growing state economy over the period from 1997 through 2015.

Overall, the story for Missouri is little changed compared to a year ago. Since the late 1990s, Missouri’s economy has increased at half the rate of that of the United States as a whole. Eighteen years is not a terribly long time, and we all hope that Missouri’s future will be brighter. But the question remains: Why has the Missouri economy reported such slow growth over the past eighteen years?

The answer is not simple. Note that the ten fastest growing states are: North Dakota, Texas, South Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, California, Idaho, Arizona, and Oklahoma. There is no one clear feature shared by these ten states that can account for their economic success. Some of them do have natural resources and have benefitted from being able to dig a hole in the ground and extract things that are valuable to the rest of the world. But that is not the only explanation. For example, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah (at least) do not fit the oil/natural gas story. Alternatively, the ten states with the lowest growth rates are Michigan, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, West Virginia, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and New Jersey. No single attribute these states might have in common would account for their struggles, either.

Income tax rates cannot, alone, explain the differences in growth rates. The nine states with no earned income taxes (followed by rankings) are: Alaska (40), Florida (20), Nevada (16), New Hampshire (25), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (30), Texas (2), Washington (13), and Wyoming (11). The nine states with the highest marginal income tax rates (followed by rankings) are: California (7), Hawaii (37), Oregon (4), Minnesota (17), Iowa (23), New Jersey (42), Vermont (26), New York (29), and Maine (46). The mean rank for the nine states with no income taxes is 17.8 while the mean rank for the nine states with the highest income tax rates is 25.7.

Overall, the evidence does not prove, but does suggest, that income tax rates do matter for economic growth. Of course, a host of other factors matter as well. In order to assess the role of income tax rates on growth, the ideal test would involve holding everything else constant. In other words, you would want to examine a parallel version of New Jersey, for example, but one with a lower income tax rate. Holding everything else constant, economic theory suggests that New Jersey would grow faster.

The broader message is that lots of factors that influence a state’s economic growth rate. Each state is an experiment in which tax rates, school quality, and various government services are provided endogenously by state policymakers. The bundle of policies and regulations is too large and complicated for us to identify how each one matters. And on top of the political attributes, there are the things that lie underground, or on the ground itself (or the ocean front—or lack thereof), that people living in each state can consume. All policymakers can do is to try and manage the factors they can influence in a way that will help their state grow faster.

In case you are wondering, Kansas ranked as the 29th-fastest-growing state over this period. So, why can’t Missouri grow at least as fast as its neighbor? It’s a frustrating question, because we have a Gordian knot of regulations, laws, and policies that make it difficult to determine specific causes of our stagnation. Not only have policymakers failed to move Missouri in the right direction in the 21st century, but the complexity of our state’s problems prevents us from understanding why various initiatives have failed to produce their intended results. In my view, it seems like a good time for Missouri to review its entire spectrum of policies. For instance, we have not had a constitutional convention in this state since 1947. Maybe it is time for an institutional overhaul.

The post It Could Be Worse. Not Much Worse, but It Could Be Worse. appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri currently sits near the middle of state rankings of educational achievement. According to Hanushek and colleagues, if Missouri improved its level of educational achievement to that of Minnesota, the top performing state, it would generate $1.065 trillion dollars in state GDP over the average life of a child born today. Yes, you read that right: Trillion with a “t.”

A key paragraph:

“The results of this exercise again suggest the importance of knowledge capital for state economic prosperity. We find that differences in achievement and attainment account for 20 to 35 percent of the current variation in per-capita GDP among states, with average years of schooling and achievement levels making roughly even contributions. In a sense, this estimate is surprisingly large, because both labor and capital are free to move across states—and thus tend to equalize rewards to workers with different skills. But our results are quite consistent with those obtained from similar analyses of the role of student-achievement levels in explaining differences in economic performance across countries (see “Education and Economic Growth,” research, Spring 2008).”

Missouri has serious fiscal crises looming on the horizon. Our pension systems are underfunded.  Our age-dependency ratio (the ratio of those who pay into our social services to those who receive them) is slated to grow from 61% in 2010 to 77% by 2030. If we don’t grow our economy, we are going to be forced to make some difficult and unpleasant financial choices. 

Improving our education system offers a way out. Rather than raising taxes or taking part in economic development shell games, we can actually help people become more productive and create more real, lasting wealth. And, if the authors of this article are right, our education system can be the engine of that economic growth.

If you’re interested in how we can improve Missouri’s schools, check out the education section of our 20 for 2020 document.

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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). 

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Today, more than half of all U.S. states have a private school choice program, but Missouri is not among those states.

It may be the fear of change that prevents opponents of school choice from envisioning what the current K-12 public education system would look like if replaced by a system of choice and competition.

As I found out in my search for the perfect preschool for my three-year-old son, if you want to see Friedman’s vision of a vibrant school marketplace in action, you don’t have to look much further than Missouri’s own preschool market.

In contrast to the increasingly standardized classrooms you might find in the K-12 sector, there are literally hundreds of options in early learning. This includes the Montessori approach, where children learn through their own experiences, as well as the Waldorf approach, where children are provided with a consistent routine in a homelike setting. There are language immersion preschools, religious preschools, and even preschools where children learn through nature, like the preschool program at the St. Louis Zoo.

Picking the right preschool requires consideration of a child’s strengths and weaknesses. My own son, for instance, could use some practice with early numeracy skills like counting, but he dislikes structured educational activities. For him, the play-based preschool approach is best.

Once I found a few preschools offering play-based learning in the St. Louis area, I had to find something in my price range. One of the arguments politicians often make for universal preschool or “preschool for all” is that preschool isn’t affordable for even middle-income households like mine. Therefore, they reason, it should be subsidized for everyone.

In reality, many preschools I found in the area were quite reasonably priced. When you consider that traditional public schools spend over $10,000 per student per year, the $3,500 tuition First Congregational Preschool charges begins to feel manageable.

Why the difference in costs? In the public school system, parents don’t pay for schooling directly and have little choice in where their kids go to school, so it shouldn’t surprise us when we see high costs and low quality. But in the private preschool market, competition (and picking up the tab ourselves) drives costs down.

This isn’t to say that squeezing $3,500 into an already-tight budget will be an easy feat. Obviously, it would be great to save $3,500 per year and send my son to the local school district tuition-free.

But then I remember a simple truth: making something free doesn’t make it quality. And as is the case with many parents, quality is my number one priority. Take Normandy School District: Would providing universal preschool fix the failing district’s problems? Or would it just add another grade onto an already failing school system?

Making preschool free for all could have other unintended consequences, like putting quality preschools out of business and diluting innovation in early learning with standardization and regulation.

Some policy leaders in Missouri and across the nation want to make preschool free for every child. But if we’ve learned anything from the failures of the K12 system, it's that we have to figure out how to leverage the marketplace that already exists, not destroy it. Efforts like Minnesota’s Early Learning Scholarship Program, for example, offer scholarships of up to $7,500 to low-income families to help them afford preschool options. Low-income children gain access to preschool, and the marketplace is preserved—it’s a win-win solution.

I am excited to send my son to a preschool that fits his needs. If Missouri wants to give low-income families that same opportunity, universal pre-K is the not the answer. 

The post Universal Pre-K May Destroy the Preschool Marketplace appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

P.S. 199 is a National Blue Ribbon Award-winner with high state test scores, strong parent involvement, a high percentage of white students, and a low percentage of students qualifying as poor. P.S. 191 is made up of mostly poor, Hispanic, and black students from the public housing unit across the street. Because of overcrowding issues, P.S. 191, which sits within nine blocks of P.S. 199, may enroll wealthier students if the districts are rezoned.

Parental response has been mixed. Some want to erase the boundaries between the two schools altogether, allowing for a greater mix of students at each. Others say they’ll move to another school district or send their kids to private school if their children are sent to P.S. 199.

The story of P.S. 199 and 191 may sound familiar to residents of Saint Louis County and City. Here students may live within walking distance of one school but attend another, because of where boundaries are drawn.

For years, numerous groups have advocated for a unified district in the Saint Louis area, but as SMI’s James Shuls has pointed out, this solution is too pie-in-the-sky to make a difference for students who need better education options today. As an alternative, the St. Louis Post Dispatch Editorial Board proposed an open enrollment policy last November. “Districts would agree to a set tuition amount that would follow any student who wanted to cross boundaries. Transportation would be provided for those below poverty level,” they wrote.

Open enrollment policies have become more common over the past several decades. In 1988, Minnesota passed the first mandatory open enrollment law. By 2013, 21 states had allowed students to transfer from their home district to another school district. Some of these states, like Missouri, only allow students to transfer if their current district is failing.

But there are many reasons why a student would want to transfer to another school district aside from poor student achievement. A student might just live closer to a school within another district (this example also applies to students who live in rural parts of Missouri).

Another way to create more options for students would be to allow charter schools to operate anywhere in the region, and allow students to transfer across district lines to attend them. For example, if a charter school opened in the Bayless school district in Saint Louis County, students in the Affton, Hancock, and Lindbergh districts could apply to attend.

In the upcoming legislative session, I hope lawmakers consider the alternative to unifying school districts—expanding the state’s open enrollment policy to include not just students in failing schools, but all students in the Saint Louis area and across the state. 

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At the time, SEIU was trying to organize Minnesota’s child care providers. When Jennifer got around to reading the petition, she realized that that it wasn’t about a health plan, as the man had told her, but part of a union organizing drive. Jennifer had been lied to.

Jennifer refused to play ball. Sometimes organizers tried to intimidate her. She recounts organizers following her to her car in an effort to show her that she was being watched. However, after she spoke out, most of the intimidation stopped. Eventually the Supreme Court affirmed the right of private care providers not to be forced into SEIU with the Harris v. Quinn decision.

In Missouri, we’re seeing similar stories coming out of SEIU organizing campaigns.

Take Mark Manteuffel, a biology adjunct at Washington University. St. Louis Public Radio reports this story about an SEIU organizer showing up at Mark’s doorstep and approaching his wife:

“They were just very pushy and rude,” Manteuffel said of the union representatives, “demanding my cell phone number. And they didn't introduce themselves first off, they just approached her and asked for me. So she stood back and asked them who they were and why they were looking for me. And she said that I would contact them if I was interested after they introduced themselves.

“The second time, the person said that they would show back up again, and she said no, he will contact you if he's interested. And they kind of huffed and puffed and said again that they would show up, and she said no, you're not listening to me, if you show up again, I will call the police and have you removed. Then the gentlemen seemed to get it.”

The campaign to organize Missouri’s in-home health care attendants is another front where SEIU has been active in our state. In 2010, the SEIU-backed Missouri Home Care Union won the right to represent all home care attendants despite receiving votes from less than 16% of attendants. Since then, the union has sought support from attendants who aren’t already members.

I’m hoping that the tactics used in Missouri don’t get as bad as they’ve been in other places. However, SEIU is not a member of the AFL-CIO and doesn’t always play by the same rules as an AFL-CIO union. For people who feel they’ve been targeted or persecuted for resisting SEIU’s organization drives, speaking out might be the best defense.

(Ms. Parrish is pictured above telling her story at an event sponsored by the National Right to Work Foundation. You can watch her presentation here.) 

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                Those who have followed our blogs on this topic will be unsurprised to learn that Missouri’s largest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, rank well on these measures. In terms of overall smoothness, Kansas City and St. Louis rank 8th and 11th, respectively, among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas:

                The relative smoothness of Missouri’s urban highways means lower costs for drivers. According to TRIP, the average driver in St. Louis and Kansas City paid $398 and $438, respectively, in annual additional vehicle operating costs from bad roads. That is far less than the U.S. large metro median ($640 per vehicle). San Francisco’s road conditions cost drivers the most, at an average $1,044 per year.

                The latest TRIP report underscores the fact that Missouri’s major roads are in comparatively good condition, at least in urban areas. However, to maintain and improve road quality, Missouri’s highways need regular maintenance and an adequate user-funding base to back that maintenance, which they currently do not have. 

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