Indianapolis has been a standout in creating a vibrant network of schools from which parents can choose. In addition to dozens of charter schools and the Indiana Choice Scholarship voucher program, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) has been sponsoring Innovation Network Schools. These schools have been achieving large yearly gains in standardized test scores, for which IPS gets the credit. And parents get the benefit of a collaborative, choice-rich environment that prioritizes student needs over turf battles. Not surprisingly, Indy’s metro population has been growing by over five percent per year since 2010.

The news out of St. Louis is much less positive. Fodor’s added it to their “do not travel” list this year and the NAACP has issued a travel advisory to warn people against driving through the city. And, just last week, new census numbers revealed that St. Louis’ population—both in the city and the county—continues to decline, with the region having now dropped out of the top 20 largest metropolitan areas.

It’s hard to imagine that St. Louis is going to be able to turn this around and start growing again unless it focuses on getting the basics right: keeping people safe, providing quality schools, and not taxing people to exhaustion. It’s time to stop defending a failing status quo.

In 2017, just 31 percent of St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) 8th graders were Proficient in English/Language Arts and just 9 percent were Proficient in Math. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) considers St. Louis Public Schools to be “fully accredited”; however, when only one out of ten students starts high school knowing how to do math at grade level, it’s going to be tough to turn out students who are college- or career-ready. And sure enough, the average ACT score in 2017 was 17.0, with 87 percent of those who took the exam scoring below the national average.

Fortunately, some St. Louis parents have access to public charter schools, many of which dramatically outperform the school district. But the district and the charter schools are often at odds. In fact, the district, along with the NAACP, is suing the charter schools over a desegregation sales tax the SLPS claims should not have been shared with the charter schools. If SLPS wins, most of the charter schools are likely to be bankrupted. Rather than trying to expand options for parents, the SLPS lawsuit could end up limiting them.

Too often in Missouri, it seems that giving parents options like charter schools is seen as a threat rather than a useful tool. Maybe that’s one reason the city is losing residents, as some parents vote with their feet and move elsewhere.

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Earlier this month a polling report released by EdChoice demonstrated that support for school choice policies is stronger among millennials than among older generations. When surveyed about charter schools, voucher programs, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships, millennials’ support for these programs was the strongest of any age group. The table below breaks down generational support for four different school choice policies.

The margin of support for school choice grows even larger with millennial parents of school-age children. Over 70 percent of millennial parents support each of the four school choice programs.

It is not surprising that millennial parents support these policies so enthusiastically, considering that 61 percent of all millennial parents would choose a nontraditional public school for their child if they could.

Unfortunately, policy has not kept up with parental demand. Consider the following:

• 11 percent of parents would like to enroll their child in a charter school, but only 5 percent actually do so.
• 38 percent would like to enroll their children in private schools, but only 10 percent do so.
• 12 percent of families would like to homeschool their children, but only 3 percent of parents do so.

By contrast, even though traditional public schools are the first choice for only 30 percent of parents, 83 percent of parents send their children to public school.

Another interesting find in this report is the difference of opinion between white and nonwhite millennials. While both groups support school choice policies, nonwhite respondents held more favorable views of charter schools (69 percent compared to 60 percent of white millennials) and ESAs (65 percent versus 55 percent of whites). These results are especially relevant in light of the NAACP calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion recently, and the backlash from parents that followed.

Given that millennials are a growing portion of the adult population and make up most of the parents of school-age children, policymakers would be wise to listen to their opinions on education policy. Instead of limited educational opportunities, parents want to be empowered to provide their children with the best education possible through school choice. 

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In Missouri, Charter Schools overwhelmingly serve African-American students. According to DESE, the 72 charter schools in Kansas City and Saint Louis enrolled over 21,000 students in 2016, two-thirds of whom were African-American.

How well did these schools perform? Take a look below at the 2015 Annual Performance Report scores for charter schools compared to traditional public schools (for context, 70 percent is required for full accreditation):

Sources: DESE St. Louis Academic Performance Data, DESE Kansas City Academic Performance Data

On average, charter schools in Kansas City tend to be higher-performing options than the traditional public school district. In Saint Louis, the results are more varied, but there are several charter options that perform as well as any school in the state.

The following tables show demographic characteristics of students in the top 5 schools in Saint Louis and Kansas City.

As you can see, several of the top-performing charter schools in the state (Northside Community School, Saint Louis Language Immersion, and Grand Center Arts Academy in Saint Louis and University Academy and the Ewing Marion Kauffman School in Kansas City) serve student populations that are more than 50% African-American. Does the NAACP really want to deny students the opportunity to attend schools like these?

Of course, charter schools should be monitored closely for their performance and closed if they are failing. Such was the case of Better Learning Community Academy, which had an APR score of 28%; it is now closed.

If new and better charter schools are not allowed to take its place, however, then parents are left with fewer quality alternatives to their neighborhood public schools. Instead of taking away future opportunities, isn’t it better to enhance the education of students, regardless of race, to give parents more choices and more control over their children’s education? The evidence would say so.

The post The NAACP’s Misguided Opposition to Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A forthcoming decision from a St. Louis County Court could restrict the ridesharing company Uber from operating in the region. The Metropolitan Taxi Commission (MTC) is seeking a restraining order against Uber, and Uber claims the MTC has breached anti-trust law. A decision could be issued this month.    

In short, the MTC is trying to stifle competition. Firms like Uber and Lyft provide innovative services consumers overwhelmingly prefer to traditional taxis. In an effort to save their own skins, taxi companies are trying to impose on ridesharing firms the same outdated, burdensome regulations they comply with (rather than push for a reform of current regulations).

But the MTC and taxi companies aren’t alone. Some commentators claim firms like Uber (and others in the so-called ‘gig economy’) are bad for consumers and workers alike, threatening not just public safety, but also the financial well-being of ordinary workers. Despite the lack of evidence for either of these claims (see here and here, respectively), there is a more fundamental  question these detractors ignore: Why shouldn’t  people  have the right to choose to ride or work with Uber?

And by the way, if Uber is dangerous, why are Missouri cities without it continually pressuring regulators to bring it to town? If Uber is bad for workers, why is the President of the Saint Louis NAACP urging the MTC to let it operate, so as to provide jobs for those with fewer economic opportunities? If Uber is so terrible that the MTC is trying to bar it from operating, why are consumers calling out for it?

Economists estimate that Uber produces nearly $7 billion in social value annually. It’s time regulators step out of the way  and let riders and drivers in St. Louis get a piece of that pie.

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There’s no other way to put it: Missouri schools simply aren’t giving African-American students a chance.

This was made particularly clear to me last month, when the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation released The Path Forward: Improving Educational Opportunities for African-American Students. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to help collect and analyze the data for the report, and I attended the launch event co-sponsored by the Chamber and the NAACP in Washington, DC.

The Path Forward broke down African-American student performance state by state. The results for Missouri were beyond disheartening:

·         On the 2015 National Assessment for Educational Progress, only 15 percent of Missouri’s African-American 4th graders were deemed proficient in reading and only 15 percent were proficient in math.

·         By the time they got to 8th grade it was even worse, with only 14 percent of African-American students proficient in reading and only 11 percent proficient in math.

·         While the graduation rate stood at 72 percent, only 6 percent of African-American students scored college-ready in all four tested subjects on the ACT.

·         Only 2.7 percent of African-American students graduated having passed at least one AP test during their time in high school. That was the third-worst rate in the nation.

There are over 151,000 African-American students in the state’s K-12 schools—16.5 percent of the overall student population. Our state will never reach its potential if that many students are failed by our education system.

So what can we do?

First, we have to break down the barriers between African-American students and quality schools. Right now, tens of thousands of students are trapped in low-quality schools because of where they live. Several of the small, almost entirely African-American districts of St. Louis County have only one high school. If students are not being served there, they have nowhere else to go. Elsewhere in the state, the geographic assignment of schooling often requires African-American students to attend schools that do not meet their needs. By allowing students to enroll across district lines—or even better, by allowing independent charter schools to open and draw students from across district boundaries—the link between where a child lives and where he or she goes to school can be severed.

Second, we have to engage the whole community in creating quality educational environments for African-American students. Statistics like those above remind us that this is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. Granting funding flexibility for students to attend the school that best serves them, regardless of whether it is a public or private school, would encourage churches, nonprofits, and other social organizations to get involved in schooling and reach out to children in need.

Third, we have to push for higher, not lower, expectations for African-American students. In the No Child Left Behind era, schools have been judged based on how well they meet basic targets of proficiency or how well they do at getting students to graduate from high school. Clearly, these are important stepping stones on the way to a well-rounded education, but they are far from sufficient. Passing AP tests, scoring well on college entrance exams and thus not needing remediation, and other more advanced indicators need to be part of the suite of metrics we use to judge student, school, and district success.

The Missouri Constitution calls for the state to fund and support a system of schools because knowledge and intelligence are “essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people.” An education system that fails to educate a large swath of our students is a threat to our rights and liberties, and fixing it should be a priority of our leaders.

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The post Show-Me Now! Let Transfer Students Return appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the fall of 2013, students from the unaccredited Normandy School District stepped out in faith. They placed their hope and trust in the hands of nearby schools, sometimes more than 20 miles away from home. Over the course of the past year, these students have overcome great obstacles to get to school in their search for better educational opportunities. Now, area school leaders have a decision to make. They can choose to honor the decisions and sacrifices of these students or they can choose to deny them access to the schools they have worked so hard to attend.

It seems clear what the decision should be.

Financially, the transfer program is a winning proposition for accredited school districts. In most cases, the transfer students – even with the lower $7,200 tuition rate that the State Board of Education set – bring more money to the district than a student moving into the district would generate. Schools are funded primarily through local property taxes and state appropriations. The local property taxes are essentially fixed, they don’t rise when one new student moves into an apartment complex, and the state provides every area school district less than $7,200 per student. Most, in fact, receive less than $2,000 per pupil from the state.

Furthermore, the $7,200 is more than enough to cover the marginal cost of an additional student. That is, it does not cost a district $7,200 to add one student to an existing classroom. As the schools have demonstrated over the past year, they have the capacity to accept and educate these students. Few have needed to hire additional teachers or faculty. They simply have been able to assimilate the students into the day-to-day operations of the school. For many schools, it simply has been business as usual.

This decision, however, is not just about the bottom line. It is a decision that has a direct impact on students themselves. We recognize that most educators enter the profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of students. This is an opportunity to do just that.

Students transferring from the unaccredited Normandy School District are among the most disadvantaged students in the state. In Normandy, nearly half of the students will not graduate on time and among those who do, their future prospects are slim. With an average ACT score of 16.8, many of these students cannot even get into state colleges and universities.

Educators – teachers, principals, and superintendents – throughout the area have an opportunity to change these statistics for the transfer students. They have the opportunity to make a difference.

As representatives of the Saint Louis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Show-Me Institute, a free-market think tank, it is not often that we find ourselves in complete agreement on an issue. On this, we stand in unity. Local school districts should reward the hard work and sacrifice of these students. Allowing them to return is a decision that makes sense to the head and to the heart.

Adolphus M. Pruitt is 1^st vice president of the Missouri NAACP and president of the Saint Louis NAACP. James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute. 

Co-Signers

Joe Knodell – Executive Director, Missouri Education Reform Roundtable

Courtney Allen Curtis – Missouri State Representative (D – 73)

The post Allowing Normandy Students To Return Makes Sense To The Head And The Heart appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That is the question facing Saint Louis officials and one that may have significant implications for state education policy. At the end of the school year, the six Imagine charter schools in the City of Saint Louis will close. The Imagine Schools have had a host of financial and academic troubles, with some reports raising questions of financial misconduct.

When the Imagine schools close, they will leave 3,000 or more students searching to find a new school. The NAACP, in a letter to state Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro, estimates that there are only 500 open seats in city charter schools. The remaining Imagine school students’ only publicly provided option is to attend a school in the city’s public school district. The problem is, Saint Louis Public Schools (SLPS) have been unaccredited for years.

Though the Missouri Supreme Court recently ruled that students in an unaccredited district like SLPS must be allowed to transfer to an accredited district, the Imagine school students are not being given the option to attend nearby suburban districts.

Recently, the Saint Louis City firefighters filed a lawsuit to allow their children into nearby accredited schools. It now looks likely that the NAACP will join the fight for expanded educational choice in the Saint Louis area.

The NAACP is strongly advocating that the Imagine students be given a chance to choose a quality school in an accredited district. Adolphus Pruitt, the local NAACP’s director, has said that litigation is likely, and that attorneys are being interviewed.

When will the pressure in Saint Louis be enough to convince state legislators that a solution is needed? Saint Louis would not be mired in this situation if public funding for education could follow students to any school of their choosing. Instead, public education dollars in Missouri are tied to school districts, and subject to a convoluted and outdated funding formula. If legislators do not bring forward a solution, it seems likely that educational choice will be forced through more litigation.

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The statement that the civil rights and other activist groups produced at the end of July suggested as a solution more of the status quo — or, at least, more for the status quo. It seems that their position is to give current schools more money (with no qualifier) and trust them to fix the problems.

Unfortunately, the economic reality is that money doesn’t grow on trees. Whether or not this attempt at ensuring that the dollars devoted to education are spent effectively actually achieves all the program’s goals, competition for the grants will hopefully create change in a stagnant system.

One of the criteria in this system that the civil rights groups oppose is the use of charter schools. Today, an article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that minority support for these institutions is on the rise, and the numbers suggest that nearly 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics support the formation of charter schools, while only 14 percent of African Americans and 21 percent of Hispanics oppose them. It is time for these groups to stop playing politics in education. The current system doesn’t work.

The Show-Me Institute’s most recent policy study shows that superintendents in school districts across the state are receiving compensation based not on performance factors, but rather correlated with school district characteristics, such as population size.

The time to reform education is now; competition and a fundamental change in how schools are funded have a far better chance of helping the kids that need it most. Although Missouri is not on the short list to receive any of the grants, we should pay close attention to this new federal market-based funding structure and track its results.

The post Education’s Race to the Top appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But the whole story took a rather baffling twist with remarks made by one of the school board’s members at a recent forum for school board candidates:

“We didn’t think it would be prudent to come to taxpayers and ask for
an increase with” $36 million “in reserves,” he told about 20 attendees
at an NAACP-sponsored forum for school board candidates. “We spent them
down purposefully. We did that with the full understanding that we
would have to make decisions about how to cut costs or seek a levy. …
It was a prudent decision to spend down reserves first.”

This is a classic case of the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" mentality. The school board knew that Columbia’s taxpayers would not willingly shoulder an additional tax burden, so they hired first — hoping the move would force taxpayers to accept an increase in taxes. With the hires made and the new personnel already present in the schools, the board was betting that the citizens would not call its bluff.

As appalling as this tactic is, there is a rather mystifying point that also needs to be highlighted: Columbia’s School Board, surprisingly, seems to be quite good about meeting its budget on a year-to-year basis. The district has ended nine of the last 10 years with a surplus, building its reserve from about 13 percent in ’96?’97 to nearly 25 percent before last year’s $10.3-million hiring spree. To be sure, the budget itself is bloated by certain unnecessary expenditures, but I would be thrilled if other public school districts consistently kept within their budgets. April’s election in Columbia will tell us whether the city’s voters are sufficiently impressed with the school board’s stewardship that they’ll overlook the shady planning of the board members.

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Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central‘s immensely popular faux-conservative talk-show host and sometime presidential candidate, coined the term "truthiness" to describe things that people "know" intuitively without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. The idea would be funnier if not for the real-world consequences of allowing prevailing opinions to overwhelm evidence to the contrary.

On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents chose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school. Professor David Webber took the vote as an occasion to argue that states should abandon education reforms that would provide immediate solutions for parents through the use of public funds that would help them send their children to the schools best suited to address their families’ needs. His rationale? A perceived lack of public support for "vouchers" — a term that studies show people
disfavor, even when they support the underlying idea of school choice.

Webber’s arguments, however, are the same "truthiness" that the National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU have trotted out prior to the adoption of each of the 19 K-12 school choice programs that remain active throughout the nation. As those programs have progressed, it has become increasingly clear that the doom-and-gloom predictions made by school choice opponents are utterly divorced from reality. Fourteen states (including Utah and the District of Columbia) currently maintain at least one school choice program, each of which is steadily growing and proving its value to the communities supporting them. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed
to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Consider Milwaukee, home of the nation’s first modern parental choice program. During the past 18 years, multiple studies of that program have shown performance improvements in Milwaukee public schools. Low-income parents have been so pleased with their newfound educational freedom that the program had to be expanded to accommodate the overwhelming demand for scholarships. Schools have sprouted in disadvantaged neighborhoods to serve parents who otherwise would have seen their children bused to public schools that were not meeting their needs. Graduation rates at scholarship schools are nearly double the graduation rates at traditional public schools. And contrary to preliminary concerns about the expense of non-public education and the threat of bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. The city is saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice. Milwaukee’s experience proves that choice can and does work to improve the lives of families.

Webber’s objection to school choice is especially perplexing, because he agrees that "parents should be able to select a particular local school that fits their transportation and teaching needs [… and] parents should have wider choices of education services." Indeed, many studies of the nation’s choice programs confirm that education improves when parents and children have the freedom to choose their schools. Alas, Webber insists — without citing any facts or studies to support his position — that choice should be limited to public schools. These things happen when "truthiness" takes hold.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to families participating in the programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., and you will hear parents tell amazing stories about the improvement in student achievement levels, and voice their markedly increased satisfaction with their children’s schools. Equipped with the evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, we can move beyond "truthiness" and develop a plan to offer Missouri’s families the kind of educational freedom that has already helped so many students realize their potential.

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On Nov. 6, voters in Utah decided to stay the course with the state’s underachieving educational status quo, voting down a program that would have granted need-based scholarships (valued between $500 and $3,000) for any student whose parents choose to send them to a school other than their government-assigned public school.

The defeat of Utah’s universal choice program was, in essence, a triumph of misinformation. The most commonly voiced concern about the program was that it would destroy public schools, abandoning thousands of poor and minority kids to educational oblivion and forcing the public to subsidize private-school educations for wealthy white families. The National Education Association, the NAACP, and the ACLU sounded that alarm again and again in millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements preceding the election, and that message ended up resonating with Utah’s voters.

Unfortunately, the message was patently false. You see, those organizations have trotted out the same stale arguments for nearly 20 years, ever since Milwaukee began considering what would become the first modern school choice program. Choice opponents repeated them ad nauseam prior to the adoption of each of the 19 programs that remain active throughout the nation. In practice, however, not one of their doom-and-gloom predictions has come to pass.

Multiple studies of school choice programs have shown no decline in the academic performance of impacted public schools, and a recent study published by the anti-choice Economic Policy Institute even acknowledges that Milwaukee public schools’ performance improved when that city’s program expanded to accommodate parents’ overwhelming demand for scholarships. And, contrary to all the concerns raised about bankrupting public schools, Milwaukee public schools currently spend $12,000 per public school student while the government spends only $6,500 to educate each scholarship student. By saving $5,500 per scholarship student (each of whom would otherwise require the full $12,000), the city is actually saving a great deal of money while also allowing thousands of families to enjoy schools of their choice.

It is tragic that choice opponents’ misinformation successfully persuaded Utahns to deny thousands of low-income children their first chance to attend the best schools available. A $3,000 scholarship might not have allowed every low-income family to afford a private school education (the average private school in Utah costs between $3,500 and $4,000 a year), but it would have at least put that opportunity in reach for parents desperate to help their children achieve a better, more prosperous life, and it would have done so without harming public schools. The vote against this scholarship program ensures that those children will continue to have only two choices: remain in the public schools that are failing them, or drop out altogether.

Fortunately, choice programs nationwide are steadily growing and proving that educational freedom helps children succeed. Despite the vote, Utah remains one of 14 states (including the District of Columbia) with an active school choice program. These programs almost invariably attract more applicants than they are allowed to serve, and no legislative or electoral vote has ever discontinued a school choice program once voters have been allowed to test it for themselves.

Missourians — especially those living with the consequences of failing public schools — should pay careful attention to the success of choice in other cities and states. Talk to people who live in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and other places where school choice has been active for years. Rather than the dire consequences predicted by choice opponents, observers will find improved levels of overall student achievement and markedly increased satisfaction for hundreds of thousands of parents. Equipped with evidence that school choice is succeeding elsewhere, hopefully we will not succumb to the fears that have cost so many children their best chance for a high-quality education.

Dave Roland has litigated school choice issues in state and federal courts and has offered expert testimony on school choice programs before several state legislatures. He is an education policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute.

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Universal health care to me is the only way you are going to bridge the gap to guarantee all Americans health care, Sharpton said. The gap between black and white in health care in some areas is three-to-one in terms of services. The only way you are going to do that communally is with a universal health care plan that makes it all an even playing field. Unless that gap is closed, it will never be one truly American entity.

Health care in the African-American community is not as up to par as it is in the white community. But universal health care would bring everyone down to the same level. That won’t solve the problems in health care for anyone. As we have stated before at the Show-Me Institute, the U.S. health care system hasn’t been developed along free-market lines for decades.

The way to truly raise health care standards across the board is to open the market to everyone — not just a few HMOs, and especially not with the government maintaining centralized control of health care decisions. Pamela Hardin, first vice president of the Columbia branch of the NAACP, makes a great point that’s applicable not only to African-Americans, but to everyone:

It is the responsibility of citizens to educate themselves on health care programs.

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