The upcoming release of the movie Supergirl got me thinking about another Superman-related film—one without laser vision or chiseled jawlines.

Waiting for Superman, released in 2010, follows families hoping to use lottery systems to get into a charter school. These families were stuck in failing public schools and desperate for a way out. Parents profiled in the film cried tears of joy when their children “won” the lottery and were so disheartened when they didn’t.

Its message was simple: droves of students are stuck in failing public schools and are waiting desperately for someone to help.

Missouri has been content allowing students to wait for Superman (or Supergirl now). My colleague, Susan Pendergrass, describes the problem well:

For years, the education establishment in Missouri has relied on a predictable playbook. Whenever state test scores drop or national rankings look bleak, we are told that the data don’t capture the whole picture, or that a new bureaucratic report card will soon show things are turning around. We are urged to wait, to invest more taxpayer money, and to trust the system.

But each year, more students move through the system either underprepared or unprepared. Thankfully, there are proven policies that can help.

Charter schools, open enrollment, and education savings accounts (ESAs) give parents choice, which in turn fosters more competition. With increased competition and accountability, schools are incentivized to innovate.

But Missouri parents have significant limits on choice.

Charter schools face a quasi-ban across the entire state, except in the St. Louis City School District, the Kansas City 33 School District, and all school districts in Boone County. (A charter school does operate in Normandy Schools Collaborative due to an accreditation provision). Missouri does not have open enrollment, and the ESA program reaches only a fraction of the state’s more than 900,000 students.

This needs to change.

Also concerning is Missouri’s reluctance to embrace comprehensive early literacy reform.

When Waiting for Superman was released in 2010, Mississippi ranked 48th in fourth-grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Louisiana ranked 47th, Tennessee ranked 38th, Indiana ranked 27th, and Missouri ranked 31st.

Since then, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana have implemented serious early literacy reform. They all recognized teaching children to read is a serious undertaking that requires serious solutions.

Success has followed. By 2024, Mississippi had risen from 48th to 9th in fourth-grade reading. Louisiana climbed from 47th to 15th. Tennessee improved from 38th to 23rd. Indiana jumped from 27th to 6th. Do those states have more work to do? Of course.

But while they’ve shown improvement, Missouri has fallen from 31st to 38th, as 42% of our fourth graders scored below basic on the reading portion of NAEP.

There was a clear opportunity to pass early literacy reform to mimic the successes of these other states with House Bill 2872. But opponents in the Senate argued that Missouri should allow the state’s 2022 early literacy reforms (Senate Bills 681 and 682) to take full effect. In other words, keep waiting.

Superman does not exist, and neither does Supergirl.

But policymakers do.

Missouri students cannot afford to spend another year waiting. There are proven reforms that can expand educational opportunity and improve outcomes. This year, Missouri chose not to pursue them. For the sake of our students, that needs to change next year.

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But the effects of open enrollment on charter schools (also public schools) are discussed less frequently. While there are a number of potential effects, one is the expansion of a charter school’s “reach” or “market.” With open enrollment, charter schools would not only be able to serve more Missourians, but they could also become more innovative.

Charter schools are essentially limited to St. Louis City, Kansas City 33, Columbia, and any district that has been provisionally accredited for three consecutive years or is unaccredited. The reason they are limited to these districts is that in all other scenarios, the local school district has to approve a charter school to operate, which in Missouri has been a nonstarter.

At the time of this writing, there are 17 charter schools in the City of St Louis, 20 charters in Kansas City 33, and 1 in Normandy Schools Collaborative (through the accreditation mechanism).

Not only are charters limited in where they can operate, but they are further limited in the student base they can pull from. Unless a student’s family pays tuition to transfer in, each charter school is limited to students within its district’s boundaries. Not every state is like this.

Arizona has bolstered its charter schools by creating a robust open enrollment program. In Arizona, charter schools are not bound to a district-wide market.

This has permitted schools such as Arizona Autism Charter Schools (AACS) to thrive and serve a wide range of families in the state. If AACS were limited just to students in one district, it may not have been able to open or stay open due to a lack of demand. But open enrollment has enabled AACS to provide a specialized curriculum for parents commuting as far as 50 miles for their children’s education.

There are so many families with so many different needs, and open enrollment would allow for Missouri’s current and future charter schools to have a greater impact and greater opportunity to innovate.

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As of today, no local school board has ever sponsored a charter school in their district, despite having the ability to do so. Until that trend is broken, the creation of charter schools depends on securing sponsorship from other state-approved entities, such as:

• 4-year universities;
• Community colleges;
• Private universities;
• Technical schools; or
• the Missouri Charter Public School Commission.

House Bill (HB) 1044 would expand charter access by allowing any state-approved sponsor to authorize a charter school in districts located within a charter county or in any municipality with greater than 30,000 inhabitants. This bill would be a major step toward increasing educational options, fostering competition, and driving innovation in Missouri.

Which School Districts Would HB 1044 Apply To?

Charter school expansion in this bill would be limited to school districts in or partly in St. Louis County, Kansas City, Jefferson County, Clay County, St. Charles County, St. Joseph, Springfield, Columbia, Joplin, Jefferson City, and Cape Girardeau. According to my analysis of the bill language, only around 60 school districts would be included.

It should be noted that if a district has been provisionally accredited (or unaccredited) for three consecutive years, any of the listed state-approved entities can sponsor a charter school in that district. Recently, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission created a charter school called the Leadership School in the provisionally accredited Normandy Schools Collaborative.

The Need to Create a Truly Choice-Rich Educational Marketplace

Expanding charter access is a good step, but it is only one part of building a stronger educational marketplace. Open enrollment is another necessary policy for our state, and it can actually amplify the potential benefits a charter school can bring.

For example, the Arizona Autism Charter Schools attract families from significant distances, with some parents commuting as far as 50 miles to access better services for their children. This opportunity exists partly due to Arizona’s open enrollment policies, which enable the charter to serve students across the entire region rather than just one district.

HB 1044 again moves Missouri in the right direction, but there should be no restrictions on where charter schools can operate. Of the 43 states with charter schools, Missouri is the only state without a rural charter. That needs to change, as educational entrepreneurs across the state should be able to go to the Missouri Charter Public School Commission if the local school district denies their application.

Missouri must build on last session’s momentum and create a stronger, more competitive, and more innovative educational landscape where every family can access high-quality options, no matter where they live.

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Numerous studies have investigated the potentially harmful effects of smartphones and social media. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General has recently called for a warning label on social media for youth. While national leaders are considering action more broadly, numerous states are considering the issue, including Missouri. House Bill (HB) 408 proposes a statewide approach to the smartphone problem in schools.

What Would HB 408 Accomplish?

If passed, HB 408 would require every school district to adopt a written policy governing “electronic telecommunication” (primarily smartphone) use. At a minimum, each policy would need to:

• Prohibit students from using, operating, possessing, or keeping on such student’s person a smartphone or connected device during regularly scheduled instructional activities.
• Require students who bring a device to school grounds to turn it off and store it properly during instructional activities.
• Establish guidelines for using smartphones during field trips, transportation, and other “noninstructional” school activities.
• Provide exceptions for students with an individualized education program (IEP), a 504 Plan (for students with special accommodations), or those with individualized healthcare plans.

Why HB 408 Would Help

Teachers overwhelmingly report that smartphones are a major classroom disruption. A Pew Research Center study found that 72% of U.S. high school teachers say that smartphone distraction is a major problem. Additionally, 83% of National Education Association (NEA) members support prohibiting smartphone and personal devices during the entire school day.

Research reinforces these concerns, as studies have shown that receiving notifications (or even the potential of receiving them), can disrupt learning and lead to lower performance.

Bullying has routinely been connected to smartphone use, with devices being used for recording fights, cyber bullying, and spreading harmful content on social media. Missouri has seen a rising number of disciplinary incidents despite a smaller student population. In the 2012–2013 school year, there were 11,703 suspensions of 10 or more consecutive days—that number rose to 14,890 in 2022–2023.

In January, Normandy Schools Collaborative enacted a total smartphone ban on district property, citing that smartphone use has been a primary cause of bullying, staged fights, and sexual misconduct. However, the success of the policy will hinge on effective enforcement.

When asked about the total ban on school property, a director of security at the Normandy School Collaborative stated: “We tried a policy where you could have a cell phone, just not in class. The students did not adhere to the policies.”

It would be inaccurate to completely scapegoat smartphones for all the aforementioned issues in schools, but it would also be difficult to argue that they are not exacerbating the problem.

HB 408 is a policy that would potentially improve the academic and social environment for Missouri schools, but its success still hinges on how districts and parents enforce the policy. If passed, it will be fascinating to see which strategies (such as allowing cell phones but not smartphones) prove most effective.

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Around a decade ago, both these districts failed to meet state standards and received the status of “unaccredited.” Because these districts lost accreditation, students were allowed to transfer to an adjoining district—and Riverview Gardens and Normandy had to pay tuition to these nearby districts.

Over 2,000 students (a quarter of the two districts’ enrollment) immediately took the opportunity to transfer—with many enrolling in Kirkwood, Mehlville, Hazelwood, Ferguson-Florissant, and Francis Howell. No receiving district gained more than a five percent increase in its student body. This exodus of students was rooted in families’ desire to improve their children’s livelihood—a sentiment that still exists today. One mother described the ability to choose a different district as follows: “She is thriving and has found a place where she fits in. She feels safe in her school environment and as her mother, I don’t worry about her safety while she’s at school.”

Reverting back to the local control is probably not going to dramatically improve the situation in Riverview Gardens or Normandy; these districts have performed terribly both before and after state control.  Parents need to be able to hold these districts accountable. Parents demonstrated they wanted choice back when students transferred out of these failing districts, and they still want it now.

Some people worry what would happen to struggling districts if families had school choice. However, these districts would not simply collapse, as they are allowed to use enrollment from any of the past four years for funding. And school choice could have other benefits for these districts. A smaller student body could lead to more academic success, and the threat of closure could serve as a wake-up call to those who love these school districts.

How much better would it be for a district if students were enrolled because they actually wanted to be there? Perhaps having a student body who actually wants to be at their school would lower the soaring absentee rates we see in these two districts and throughout the state. While I cannot guarantee that parental accountability through choice will save these districts, saving particular school districts isn’t the goal of education policy. It’s giving every student in Missouri the best opportunity to succeed. And that means giving every student in Missouri the chance to pick a school that best fits their needs.

The post Riverview Gardens and Normandy Are Regaining Local Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When the Spainhower Commission issued its final report in 1968, St. Louis County had 25 school districts (plus the Special School District). Those schools served 186,428 students. Asked to develop “a plan to provide equal access to educational opportunity for all children,” the commission recommended a consolidation of all St. Louis–area school districts into a single district. That call was taken up again in 2014 following the shooting of Michael Brown. Then, as in 1968, the solution proposed was to tear down those dividing district lines in the sake of unity. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board endorsed this plan in their piece, “One school district. One focus. One future: Unify St. Louis schools.”

Fifty-five years after the Spainhower report, the number of students enrolled in St. Louis County school districts has decreased by more than 53,000, but almost all district lines remain. Just three school districts have closed. At the time of their mergers, all three served mostly African American schoolchildren. In the 1970s, the Kinloch and Berkeley School Districts were forced by the courts to consolidate into the Ferguson-Florissant School District. In 2010, the Missouri State Board of Education consolidated the Wellston School District into the Normandy School District.

From then to now we have known that arbitrary boundaries drawn around school districts create haves and have-nots. We have known that assigning students to attend schools based on where they live has perpetuated inequities among students and limited access to quality educational options. And yet, the problem has been almost intractable. Why? According to James Spainhower, as reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger, “The only place where the report was weak, was in the thought that people could get over their biases.” I think this analysis is correct, but not in the way that Messenger implied.

According to Messenger, parents in predominantly white school districts did not want to merge with predominantly African American school districts. As we saw when students from the predominantly African American Normandy school district attempted to transfer to predominantly white school districts a few years ago, race can still be an issue. But race wasn’t the only obstacle for those Normandy students—remember, their own school district didn’t want them to leave, either—nor am I convinced that race is the primary motivating factor for those who oppose school district consolidation. People take pride in their local schools, and they do not want to see them changed. Moreover, people instinctively react when anyone attempts to force their school district to be consolidated. It is a loss of identity.

This is the problem. If we leave school districts to make this change themselves, nothing will get done. If we attempt to force consolidation on them, they will resist. This is why attempts at consolidation, except in those rare cases mentioned above, have failed in the St. Louis region. People are loathe to voluntarily consolidate their own school district unless they see a significant benefit, and they strongly resist top-down directives from the state to consolidate their schools.

It is time to change the strategy. Rather than rely on district leaders to take action or attempt to obliterate school district lines, we need to make those boundaries porous. We need to allow students to begin moving across those lines to attend schools in other school districts. We need school choice. We need open enrollment. The Post-Dispatch editorial board once championed this idea. In their call for unifying St. Louis schools they wrote, “The fastest way to move toward such unity would be for the school districts in the St. Louis region to adopt an open enrollment policy.”

Now there is an open enrollment proposal before the Missouri legislature. Yet, as Blythe Bernhard and Jack Suntrup have reported, “Missouri educators vow to fight as open enrollment plan gains steam.” This opposition was to be expected. What was not expected was the complete silence from those who previously advocated for unity among St. Louis schools.

If we continue to look for top-down solutions to this problem, in another 55 years we’ll likely be exactly where we are today—where a student’s educational opportunities are dictated by his or her zip code.

The post Open Enrollment in St. Louis Schools: 55 Years in the Making appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For accredited districts (districts that meet the academic standards set by the state), only the local school board can sponsor a charter school. This has served as a formidable roadblock to charter school formation, as no accredited district has sponsored a charter school. However, if a school district is unaccredited (districts that fail to meet the standards set by the state) for three consecutive years, or has been provisionally accredited for three consecutive years, any of the other entities mentioned in the above paragraph can sponsor a charter school. Recently, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission created a charter school called the Leadership School in the provisionally accredited Normandy Schools Collaborative.

While the Missouri Legislature is most likely not thinking of charter schools in terms of nightclubs, the prospect of charter school expansion is being discussed to make the list less exclusive. Senate Bill (SB) 304 would allow charter schools to be created in any municipality with a population of more than 30,000 or any school district located within a county with a charter form of government. If SB 304 passed, charter schools could be established in:

• All currently eligible districts
• School districts in the following counties: St. Louis, Jackson, St. Charles, Jefferson, and Clay (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)
• School districts in municipalities with more than 30,000 residents, which currently includes: Cape Girardeau, Jefferson City, Joplin, Springfield, and Columbia (a sponsor from a state-approved entity would be required)

SB 304 would be a solid first step to give parents outside of St. Louis and Kansas City more options. Columbia is a good example of a city whose residents could benefit greatly from this bill. In Columbia , English/language arts (ELA) and mathematics scores are below the state average—students in the district currently have 43.8% and 30.8% proficiency rates, respectively. Low-income students are particularly struggling, with rates of 24% and 13.1% in ELA and mathematics—around 7 points below the state average for low-income students. With these scores in mind, maybe a family in Columbia wants a charter school because it is unsatisfied with the instruction in the local district. Perhaps a low-income family could find a charter school that specializes in instruction for low-income students. Charter schools can provide these needed alternative options for Columbia families, and SB 304 would make it possible.

Charter schools of various types (classical, English as a second language, low-income, etc.) have opened in Kansas City and St. Louis. One school, University Academy, has been named a “Blue Ribbon School” (an honor bestowed by the U.S. Department of Education for schools that exemplify excellence). Families across the state want and need more options. Missouri is a diverse state, and families deserve a diverse array of options to cater to their children’s needs and hold education institutions accountable.

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By now, we have all seen that wonderful photo of the young child sitting in the backseat of her parents’ car. You know, the one where the adorable blonde with buck teeth gives her mother the side eye. The meme has been shared countless times via social media. It also happens to exemplify the exact feeling I had upon reviewing the Heritage Foundation’s recently released Education Freedom Report Card.

The report ranked Missouri 17th overall in terms of education freedom. This ranking includes measures on “transparency,” “regulatory freedom,” and “spending.” But it was the ranking on “school choice” that stood out the most. The Heritage Foundation ranked Missouri 4th in the country in terms of having the best school choice environment. This ranking included considerations for private school choice, private school choice program design, charter schools, homeschooling, and public school choice.

The reason I was so shocked by this ranking should be obvious to anyone living in the Show-Me State—school choice options are almost nonexistent for anyone living outside of St. Louis or Kansas City.

This is what school choice looks like in Missouri.

Charter Schools

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that in Missouri there were 71 total charter schools in 2019—20 (Missouri ranks 27th in the number of charter schools). This accounts for 2.9 percent of total public schools (34th overall). In total, these charter schools served fewer than 25,000 students (28th overall), or 2.7% of all public school students (34th overall).

What the NCES rankings don’t reveal is that all these schools and all these students are in either St. Louis City or Kansas City. Missouri has had charter schools for more than 20 years. The first one ever to open outside of the major cities just opened this year; the Leadership School opened with 94 students in the Normandy School District, and it faced considerable opposition. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Normandy schools have not been fully accredited for the last decade and are under the control of the Missouri Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. In 2021, Normandy students scored lower than any district in the state in English with 14% proficiency and second lowest in math with 5% proficiency.

This is what number four looks like?

Private School Choice

The Missouri Legislature created the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program in 2021. Students are using the program for the first time this year. EdChoice reports that 51% of families in “applicable Missouri cities and counties” are eligible for the program. While that sounds impressive, it is not. The program is limited to counties eligible for charter schools or cities with more than 30,000 residents. Just as charter schools are out of reach for many in our state, these program restrictions put school choice out of reach for many Missourians. Furthermore, that 51% number includes everyone eligible based on income restrictions without taking into account other factors (200% of the federal free-and-reduced price lunch income level).

Even if you do live in Clay, Jackson, Jefferson, St. Charles, or St. Louis County (the eligible counties), or Columbia, St. Joseph, Joplin, Jefferson City, Cape Girardeau, and the City of St. Louis (the eligible cities) and you meet the income requirements, you still have other hurdles. Your child must meet one of the following criteria to be eligible: have an Individualized Education Program, be entering kindergarten or first grade, or have attended public school the previous year.

At most, based on the number of tax credits available for the program, the scholarship program could serve 3,900 Missouri students.

This is what number four looks like?

We are certainly glad to see the small gains Missouri has made toward greater educational freedom, but the work is not done despite this curious number four ranking.

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Two paragraphs in the Post-Dispatch story are worth highlighting:

Normandy schools have not been fully accredited for the last decade and are under the control of the Missouri Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Starting in 2013, the district paid tuition and transportation for about 1,000 students to transfer to higher-performing districts, as allowed under state law. The district nearly went bankrupt after spending $35 million on the transfer program. It returned to provisional accreditation in 2017, effectively ending the transfer program.

The district’s test scores still rank as lowest in the state, with 15% of students proficient in English and 7% proficient in math in 2019. There have been recent improvements, including the graduation rate at Normandy High rising from 53% in 2013 to 78% in 2019.

Families are already voting with their feet. Normandy has been shedding students, either through the transfer program or now just the old fashioned way (the Post-Dispatch reports elsewhere in the story that enrollment in the district is down 316 students, or 11 percent, this school year).

It is the school board of this district that approved a resolution last month expressing its “complete discontentment” with the Missouri Charter School Commission’s process of soliciting and developing a charter school in the district, as the board wanted to be included more in the process. Why on earth should a district that has manifestly failed to educate its students or even keep its financial house in order have any say on a new school that is coming in to try and do better? Lunacy.

And it is the civic leaders quoted in the story who believe that this district should have a monopoly on education provision within the boundaries of the Normandy School District. Also lunacy.

The question has to be asked of these leaders: How can you, in good conscience, look into the eyes of the children of Normandy and tell them that they don’t deserve a different option? Why must they stay tethered to a district that has been foundering for longer than they have been alive? Would you accept this for your own children?

The post A Charter School for Normandy? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Northside has consistently been one of the top-performing schools in St. Louis, and it’s easy to understand why when listening to Asher talk about his passion for serving low-income students and the culture of expectations and excellence that guides the school.

North Side puts to lie the pernicious notion that because a child comes from a certain neighborhood, is of a certain racial or ethnic group, or comes from a family that is struggling, they cannot learn.

It isn’t easy. Students who come from stable, two-parent homes in safe neighbors absolutely have advantages over those who do not. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean its impossible. And just because it is hard doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth doing.

Part of the story, left unsaid in the KSDK spot, is that because of how Missouri authorizes charter schools, Northside is limited to serving students in St. Louis City even though it sits less than a 10 minutes’ drive from the boundary of the Normandy Schools Collaborative, one of the lowest-performing school districts in the state. Students born eight minutes away from the school instead of seven can’t attend, because politicians have created artificial barriers between children and opportunity.

That is not a happy story. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. It should change.

The post The City-County Line Remains a Barrier to a Good Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Jones is part of a student transfer program that was created when the Normandy schools were so low performing that an emergency exit was created that allowed students to enroll in other districts. Now, the “system” that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) uses to rate the performance of school districts has somehow declared that Normandy, a district in which just three percent of 7^th graders were proficient in math last year, is good enough. The transfer program is over, and the exit has been closed.

But let’s look at the bigger picture. Parents (and I can’t believe how often I have to say this) want to have choices when it comes to their child’s education. Of course parents in one of the lowest-performing districts in the state jumped at the chance to leave when it was offered. But guess who else chooses something other than their neighborhood school? Parents of bullied students, parents of students who are assigned to a big school but would do better in a small school, parents of students who want or need a particular curriculum such as fine arts or the classics and parents of students with disabilities who find a program that connects to their child’s needs. This list could go on and on.

So now the media is highlighting the tragedy of Tyler Ratlif Woods, who was on the path to college. Woods just found that he will not be attending high school in Ladue, where he went to elementary and middle schools. Instead he must return to his low-performing and potentially dangerous neighborhood high school in Normandy. One article quotes a transfer student’s father, Paul Davis, who called the transfer program a “gift from God.”

These stories are upsetting. It seems unfair. Forcing these children to return to their crumbling district isn’t going to help that district much, but it is going to hurt those children. In this case it’s obvious. But let’s not forget the less obvious—school-aged children are not the property of a school district by virtue of their address. They are individuals with individual needs who should have options when it comes to their education.

The post Getting Sent Back to School appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When a school district in Missouri loses accreditation, students are allowed to transfer to a higher-performing school district. In recent years, thousands of students from the Normandy and Riverview Gardens School Districts used this provision in state statute to transfer to some of the highest-performing school districts in the state. But students lost the right to transfer when the state board of education voted to give the school districts provisional accreditation, based in part on improvements in student achievement-test scores. Based on the Education Next study, we have to wonder whether those learning gains were just an illusion caused by the state making the test easier.

It is important to understand this analysis is not comparing the rigor of the learning standards in each state. Standards say what students should learn in each grade. The relevant measure here is what students must score to be considered proficient by the state assessment. While the tests are developed based on the standards, setting the cut-score is a subjective process.  The lower the cut-score, the higher the percentage of students who will score proficient.

In 2009, Missouri had among the most rigorous assessments in the nation. The two images below come from a report from the U.S. Department of Education, “Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales.” Look far to the right and you will notice that Missouri led the nation in rigor on the 8^th grade reading assessment and had the third most rigorous state assessment in 8^th grade mathematics.

What followed 2009 was chaos. Missouri adopted the Common Core standards and ditched our rigorous state assessment. The state then went through turmoil as citizens pushed back against the Common Core, the legislature called for new standards to be written, and the state shuffled through four different state assessment systems. In the end, we wound up with an assessment that was easier than the one we had before.

Forget for a moment the overall message that lowering standards sends and the potential it has to impact all students. In the cases of Normandy and Riverview Gardens, lowering standards may have had a direct and detrimental impact on students. The year Normandy lost its accreditation, just 22 percent of the district’s students scored proficient or advanced in communication arts and 23 percent did so in math, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2017, the district regained provisional accreditation even though the performance of students in the district was not substantially better. That year, 34 percent of students scored proficient or advanced in communication arts and only 19 percent did so in math. Keep in mind these scores were with the easier tests.

Missouri’s state board of education voted to give provisional accreditation to the Riverview Gardens School District in 2016 and the Normandy Schools Collaborative in 2017. It seems those decisions may have been based on the faulty assumption that the student achievement in the districts was improving, when it seems the state was just giving easier tests. At the very least, we owe it to the students of these districts to investigate this further.

The post Like a Sore Thumb: Missouri’s Testing Standards Buck National Trend appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In statewide testing, less than half of the students in the district scored proficient or advanced in English and only about a third scored proficient or advanced in math. The latest average ACT score was 16.5, nearly five points below the national average of 21. Has the Hayti School District sufficiently prepared the class of 2019 to succeed after graduation?

Hayti has been provisionally accredited for over a decade, but that does not necessarily mean the state has taken adequate steps to make sure the district improves. The state monitors provisionally accredited districts, but there are few real consequences if their performance stagnates—and the SBE has been quick to upgrade districts even before sustained progress has been made. Unfortunately, the Missouri School Improvement Program is a series of graduated but mostly meaningless interventions.

My recent essay for the Show-Me Institute, “Accountability in Missouri’s Public School System,” goes into greater detail about our state’s struggling districts and argues that if accountability is defined as tangible consequences for district and school personnel, the state has been at best inconsistent in holding districts responsible for poor performance.

Some examples: Jennings and Caruthersville, both formerly provisionally accredited, were reclassified as fully accredited by the SBE even though they failed to meet the academic goals the districts set themselves. Not far behind Hayti, Calhoun R-VIII, and Hickman Mills have been provisionally accredited for 5 or more years.

Unaccredited districts also have been let off the hook despite a lack of significant progress. The SBE voted unanimously to classify Kansas City as provisionally accredited even though the former Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Commissioner said the district had not established a “consistent trend of improvement.”

Two other once-unaccredited districts—Riverview Gardens and Normandy—failed to meet most performance targets set by the state before the SBE granted them provisional accreditation. In the case of the St. Louis City School District, its scores in all performance areas had not improved significantly . . . but it was unanimously approved for full accreditation.

These examples call into question the commonly held assumption that the state holds traditional public schools accountable. One could argue that the 1993 transfer law—although separate from DESE’s Missouri School Improvement Program—is the best form of accountability for districts. When students have the right to leave for a better school, unaccredited districts must improve to avoid having to pay other districts to educate their students.

Now that there are no unaccredited districts in Missouri, however, students in districts like Riverview Gardens and Normandy no longer have the right to transfer. Before thinking of this as a cause for celebration, we should recognize that this creates a trap for students whose districts are performing just well enough to prevent triggering the transfer law, but not well enough to provide a genuinely good education.

Families should not be waiting years or even decades for schools to make small gains or else become unaccredited so that students can transfer out. Under the current accountability system, the kids are the ones who face the consequences—whether they have to take remedial classes in college or cannot get a well-paying job—not the district or school leaders. Our accountability system is failing, and students deserve better than being forced to stay put in poorly performing schools.

The post Without Consequences for Failing Schools, Students Lose appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, this situation faces 17 school districts in Missouri. According to state accreditation standards, not every school in a district has to perform above 70 percent on the annual performance review to keep accreditation—just the district as a whole. This system has left kids in failing schools while keeping alternatives like charter schools out of the area. Recent proposals in the Missouri legislature could help solve this problem.

A few weeks ago, the Missouri House of Representatives passed HB634. A similar bill is now in the Senate. While HB634 does not allow charter schools to open everywhere in the state, it would increase the number of districts where charter schools could open. One section of the law targets districts with underperforming schools, and would allow charter schools:

In any school district in which at least one school building has received a score of sixty percent or less on its annual performance report for two of the three most recent annual performance reports available as of the date on which a charter school applies to open a charter school in the district under this subdivision.

Based on the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Annual Performance Reports, 97 schools in 29 school districts would fit this criterion, including Kansas City and Saint Louis (where charter schools already operate) and the Normandy Schools Collaborative (which is unaccredited but does not have a charter school yet). Thus, this rule would add 26 new school districts to those where charter schools can operate currently:

Certainly, it is a cause for concern that Missouri has so many districts with chronically underperforming schools. There is another problem, however, with failing schools being the only option in some of these districts.

Out of these 29 districts, 17 have “chokepoints”—schools that every student in the district will have to attend—that have been rated as failing in two of the last three years. Normandy is one such district; the others are the districts in bold in the table above. Most of the chokepoint schools are middle schools and junior high schools.

Children in these communities have no choice but to spend some part of their education career in a school that the state deems failing. Families in these districts and across Missouri deserve better options for their kids. 

The post “Chokepoints” Demonstrate Need for New Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

 This may be good news for the school district, but it could be bad news for students who have transferred out of the district over the past several years. According to Missouri law, unaccredited districts must pay for students’ tuition and transportation costs if they choose to transfer to a neighboring school district or charter school. Currently, 436 students from the Riverview Gardens district attend school outside of it. Now that the district is accredited, those students have lost the right to transfer at taxpayers’ expense to another public school district.

 Participating school districts are working on an agreement to allow students to continue in their current schools after parents voiced concerns about disrupting their children’s education. According to assistant education commissioner Chris Neale, transferring students will be allowed to finish out at least this school year in their current school. Some students may be allowed to stay in their current schools until a “natural stopping point”—at the end of elementary or middle school for example—but no new students will be allowed to participate and Riverview Gardens will not provide transportation after June 2017.

 Based on the scores below, it is easy to see why parents do not want to put their children back in the Riverview Gardens school system:

While test performance is not the only factor in the APR score—graduation rate, attendance rate, and college and career readiness are other factors—it is troublesome that a district with such low scores could become fully accredited as early as next year if they keep their APR score above 70%. To the school district’s credit, Riverview Gardens is working diligently to improve performance after years of academic and fiscal mismanagement. While these gains represent progress, the district still has fewer than 15% of students scoring proficient in Math and Science for the 2016 school year. Is it in the best interest of any child to be forced to attend a school with this kind of track record?

With such a low performance threshold, Missouri’s accreditation system and transfer law create a trap for students in districts just barely performing above the threshold—the schools perform too well for the students to be allowed to leave, but not well enough to prepare the students for work or college.

Missouri families deserve to make their own educational choices and shouldn’t be bound by fluctuating quality measures of the districts where they live. For the students in Riverview Gardens, continuing the current transfer program would help them in the short term. In addition, revising Missouri charter school laws and establishing tax credit scholarship programs or education savings accounts that are available to all students would help every child get the education that best fits their needs.

The post Riverview Gardens Students Lose the Right to Transfer appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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.

Earlier, I wrote about Mehlville School District’s proposed property tax increase. Voters in both Melville and Kirkwood must decide whether they think additional funds will improve the quality of the districts. To make this decision, they should consider how the school districts are currently spending tax dollars.

A group called Tax Fairly opposes the tax hike. Information about their reasons for opposing the tax increase may be found here.

Tax Fairly points out that Kirkwood has the highest-paid superintendent in the state and the second highest-paid teachers in the state (only the Clayton School District pays more). Kirkwood School Board President E. J. Miller told the Post-Dispatch, “We want the best of the best. We think that to hire them and retain them, we want to pay them well.”

Proponents of Prop A believe the property tax increase is necessary due to increasing enrollment. A district-hired demographer estimated an enrollment increase of between 10 and 11 percent by 2019. To keep up with the rate of enrollment, the district would have to hire new teachers to keep class sizes down.

Tax Fairly disagrees with the district’s enrollment estimates. The group questions the methods used to determine 2019 enrollment. They point out that at least some of the rising enrollment the district has experienced has been due to transfer students from the Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts. They also call attention to the fact that Kirkwood allows children of teachers in the district to attend the school tuition-free.

I want to add one wrinkle to this debate. The chart above provides teacher–student ratios for Kirkwood and the surrounding school districts (using Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Data). Kirkwood classrooms average 14 students per teacher, which is lower than most other school districts in the area. Perhaps it’s not Kirkwood’s teacher salaries that are driving costs, but the number of teachers they need.

Research shows that teacher quality is more important than class size, that is, class sizes could increase slightly and still maintain the same level of quality. In fact, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the desirable standard for student enrollment in classrooms is between 17 and 25 students, depending on the grade level, well above Kirkwood’s average.  Is the district operating as efficiently as it could? Arguably not.

Although many agree the district is performing well, a major concern for taxpayers is how the district will spend $10.4 million in additional revenue annually. The 2015–2016 operating revenue budget is $62 million. Is all of that new money necessary?

The post Property Tax Increase on Ballot in Kirkwood School District appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Roman philosopher Cicero once said, “Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.” It is hard not to think of these words when reading the final report of the Ferguson Commission.

The signature priorities, “justice for all,” “youth at the center,” and providing individuals the “opportunity to thrive,” could not be more noble. Unfortunately, we cannot judge the Ferguson Commission’s report on good intentions alone. We must examine the probable results. It is certainly too early to understand all of the long-term implications of the policies that the report advocates; however, based on the evidence, the prospects are bleak.

For example, the commissioners call for an end to poverty. Who can argue with that? But to eliminate poverty, they urge the adoption of a $15 an hour minimum wage. The commissioners admit that “debate exists over the short- and long-term economic implications of raising the minimum wage.” Yet they ignore this debate and selectively cite a report in support of the higher wage. This may be to the detriment of the people the commission is attempting to help. As Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman once said, “The minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying that employers must discriminate against people who have low skills.” The people most in need of entry-level jobs will suffer the most.

The commissioners outlined a plan to “enhance college access and affordability,” but gave short shrift to the greatest impediment standing in the way of a college education for disadvantaged students—subpar academics. The average ACT score for the Normandy school district was a paltry 16; not even high enough to gain admittance to most four-year state institutions. Less than seven percent of students scored above the national average. It isn't funding that is keeping these kids from going to college; it is their abysmal K-12 preparation.

The report, which is ostensibly about improving the outcomes for low-income African-American students (who make up more than 80 percent of the Ferguson-Florissant School District and more than 96 percent of students in Normandy), includes a plank granting access to state scholarships to undocumented students brought to the United States as young children. We can debate the wisdom of that policy another day, but what on earth does it have to do with improving outcomes in North Saint Louis County?

The commission did offer some helpful suggestions for making the inter-district transfer program sustainable, but they stopped short of calling for greater freedom of choice for the parents of children trapped in underperforming schools. Rather than confronting the issue, the commissioners punted and simply called for the creation of an “education design and financing task force.”

In the end, the K-12 education proposals amount to a call for more of the same. The state needs to “invest” in a universal pre-K program and move the compulsory education age down to 5 from 7. Note, not, “create a pre-K system that doesn’t suffer from the same problems of the current one,” but simply append another grade onto K-12 schools that are not meeting the needs of low-income and African-American students.

This is not to say that the commission report was altogether wrong. Indeed, the commissioners offered many suggestions that were on point and, if enacted, could lead to improvements in the Saint Louis community. But unfortunately, when the commission veered away from policies focused on the issues at hand toward tired planks of political opportunists—like increasing the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, creating a universal pre-K program, and getting scholarships for undocumented kids—it lost sight of the problems it was set up to solve.

The post The Ferguson Commission: A Bridge to Nowhere appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Shannon won’t be returning to Ladue next year, and despite having post-traumatic stress disorder from being severely bullied in sixth grade, Keiara will not be allowed to transfer either. Of the 679 students who applied to transfer, only 564 were approved. According to the story, the Harpers were denied, because of the confusing, byzantine process by which families have to demonstrate their eligibility for the program.

The Post-Dispatch reported:

Now, it’s impossible for us to know whether or not the Harpers actually followed the procedure as they said they did. What we do know is that this family should not have to jump through so many hoops to make sure their daughters receive a quality education.

Keaira and Shannon, and many students like them, need more options. Last week, the Show Me Institute hosted former Oklahoma State Senator Jabar Shumate, who spoke about the Sooner State’s efforts to expand school choice. I encourage you to watch my interview with him. While it might be too late for the Harpers this year, we can work to create more and better options for families zoned for failing schools.

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