Missouri should be as cognizant of the benefits student-athletes provide public universities as any other state. The University of Missouri athletic department brought in $107.3 million worth of revenue in 2018, and its men’s basketball ticket revenue rose nearly 70 percent after signing highly-touted recruit Michael Porter Jr. in 2017. Although student-athletes do receive a sort of payment in free tuition and room and board, this compensation often pales in comparison to the massive sums of money the players generate. Shouldn’t Missouri allow student-athletes greater opportunities to profit from their position in the market?

Other states are already addressing the question of student-athlete compensation. Both Colorado and California have proposed bills in the past few months granting student-athletes the ability to sign endorsement deals, superseding the authority of the NCAA. Federal legislators have even gotten in on the action, as several members of the House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would alter the tax code definition of an amateur to allow college athletes to profit from public appearances.

Legislation like this provides benefits for all involved parties. It allows student-athletes whose performance merits it to earn money without imposing costs on universities. Since schools no longer use third-party endorsement deals or individualized merchandise, students profiting from such deals wouldn’t interfere with university revenue. Moreover, providing these opportunities to student-athletes may give Missouri schools an edge in recruiting battles. In short, these policies introduce the free market to college athletics, and if Missouri acts it could be a win for the state.

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Its passage was also long overdue, as many of the state’s geographic peers have long crossed that bridge of worker choice. Before Governor Eric Greitens’ signed the bill into law, Missouri was surrounded on all sides by Right to Work states here in the Midwest, with the exception of Illinois. Or, if you view Missouri as a southern state, Missouri was the lone holdout among the members of the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference. Missouri becomes the 28th Right to Work state, joining the majority of states who have adopted this common-sense reform.

Right to Work is a victory that empowers workers, but legislators should not rest on their laurels while the list of other opportunities in labor reform remains long. I look forward to the upcoming debates about Paycheck Protection, prevailing wage, project labor agreements and union transparency. 

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In college track and field, the NCAA sets both provisional and automatic marks for athletes to qualify for the national competition. The marks are set very high and often, not many athletes qualify automatically or even provisionally. In contrast, the state’s board of education has set the bar for accreditation and provisional accreditation very low; so low, in fact, that the distinctions are essentially meaningless.

The distinctions are also inconsequential because they change very little for the district besides the label. And as Shakespeare noted, “a low-performing school district by any other name would smell like a low-performing school district.” OK, maybe Shakespeare did not say that exactly, but you get the point; call the district what you will, the label has no real impact on students.

The state is moving to a new accreditation system this coming year. While the new system will be an improvement, it still leaves much to be desired. Both the old system and the new system accredit school districts, not schools. This was very important in the accreditation decision of Saint Louis Public Schools, where magnet schools drove up the district’s average performance. District level evaluations, especially in large urban districts, give parents very little information when they are deciding where to send their children to school.

Missouri’s current method of accrediting school districts does little more than give grown-ups something to argue about and has few real implications for schools or students. The state would be doing a real service to families if it moved to a school report card format, where schools are graded on a scale from “A” to “F.” A school grading system would allow families to be more informed, hold their local school more accountable, and express choice more wisely. Isn’t the goal to have parents become informed and engaged?

The current system pre-supposes that the state can hold schools accountable by accrediting the school district, when in reality, school accountability is best achieved when families are allowed to hold their child’s school accountable. The state can help in this effort if it makes school performance more transparent at the school level. If the reclassification of the Saint Louis Public School District proves anything, it is that the state’s standards are much lower than parents’ standards.

James V. Shuls is the education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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St. Louis is hosting the Midwest regional finals in this year’s men’s basketball tournament […] But St. Louis was left off the list when the NCAA awarded sites for the 2012-2016 Final Four. Those tournaments instead went to New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Indianapolis and Houston.

“Among those communities that were named Final Four hosts during that cycle, all of them had a public support component that significantly facilitated the staging of the event,” [Greg Shaheen, who oversees the NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball tournament,] said in an interview with The Associated Press.

God forbid, what a travesty it would be if St. Louis failed to continue to be America’s no. 1 sports city. On another note, isn’t it time we stop calling ourselves that, given that about 10 cities have won that award since we did?

Again from the Star:

Missouri currently is “a first tier sports destination,” said Frank Viverito, president of the St. Louis Sports Commission. But he added: “Without a public component to our efforts, then we will fall significantly behind other states.”

Oh well, tough break. I guess we’ll just have to keep more of our tax dollars in order to provide the services that governments are supposed to provide, rather than giving them away to sports promoters.

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