Susan Pendergrass speaks with J.S. Onésimo “Ness” Sandoval, demographer and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Saint Louis University, about what the data says about the future of the St. Louis region. They discuss record low birth rates and what they mean for school enrollment, why St. Louis is among the top regions in the country for deaths outnumbering births, how the region compares to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and why suburbs like Chesterfield and St. Charles are aging faster than most people realize. They also discuss the role of housing supply, school choice, crime, and domestic migration in whether St. Louis can attract and retain young families, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00): Well, certainly not the first time we’ve spoken, Dr. Sandoval. At St. Louis University, you are such a fascinating demographer of the region, and I’ve been following your work as new census data has been released. You’ve been writing about it and creating what I think are really cool mapping tools that folks can look at to see how the St. Louis region is impacted. Thanks for coming on to talk about that. But first I want to sort of expand our view, because pretty sure that I read within the last week that the number of babies born in the United States was at an all-time low. Is that right?

Ness Sandoval (00:35): Yeah, so every year the United States will probably be breaking records. The data coming out for 2025 is a record low, and the data coming out for 2026 is even lower. The first few months of 2026, the provisional data that’s out shows even fewer. And this is what we expected. We call this a demographic shock, because in 2026, whenever you create an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, rational people do not have children until they understand that their job is safe, there’s not a recession coming, and we’re not at war. When you create this sense of fear, young people do the rational thing and don’t have children. We saw this in 2020 with COVID. We saw this in 2008 with the Great Recession. Anytime there is uncertainty, young people will postpone births. And that’s what we’re seeing. This started in November. We started to see the decline in births, and it’s continued from November, December, January, February. And so this is what we’re going to see.

Susan Pendergrass (01:51): So next year is going to be lower. And when you look at the state of Missouri, I’ve been saying this ad nauseum for years that our K-12 school enrollment is declining and will decline because of that sort of peak in 2008, just before the Great Recession. So our biggest kindergarten class was around 2012, and our kindergarten classes have by and large declined ever since. And so those kids are moving through the system. You can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:06): No, we peaked in 2008.

Susan Pendergrass (02:11): By and large declined ever since 2012. And so those kids are moving through the system. So you can project that we will just have fewer and fewer kids enrolled in our K-12 system in the state of Missouri.

Ness Sandoval (02:24): Yeah, this is true, and we have a pretty good chart. We make these for every city. We’re replacing very large cohorts of children who were born. I have a son who was born in 2007, just before the recession. That cohort that graduated in St. Louis was 40,000 students. The baby birth cohort is now 27,000 students. So that’s just in that one year a 13,000 decline. And it’s going to decline every year for the next 15 to 18 years, because we don’t know what the bottom is yet. It has not reached the bottom.

Susan Pendergrass (03:01): Right. People say where are the kids going? I’m like, they’re not going anywhere. They weren’t born. The St. Louis region, like Clayton is declining, Ladue was, I mean, all of these school districts, I think almost everyone in the county has fewer kids today than they had 10 years ago.

Ness Sandoval (03:07): They weren’t born. Yes, and it’s not just St. Louis County. St. Charles County is experiencing this. There are some parts that are growing, in the Wentzville area, O’Fallon, but if you look at the old St. Charles areas, they’re experiencing decline. Families with children are declining in those areas. We had made an interactive map that I think shocked a lot of people, of seniors outnumbering youth. People could not comprehend this. Like, my gosh, this is not 2000 where youth were dominating these neighborhoods. I live out here in Chesterfield. The entire Route 64 corridor is senior citizens dominating the youth in Chesterfield. People are shocked. More seniors lived in Chesterfield than youth in 2010, and that’s only grown since. This is happening throughout West County.

Susan Pendergrass (04:14): Wow. And your maps actually go down to the zip code, right? You have very granular data.

Ness Sandoval (04:27): Across into Illinois, yes. The only way you can turn this around is young people from across the United States deciding that they want to make St. Louis their home, have a family there, create a business there. This is what I promote. We have to get younger. We really should have a preferential option for families with children. And that’s a hard message for a lot of people because they’re like, wait a minute, we grew from 1970 to 2020. And I’m like, but all of that growth was driven by babies born. Over 1.8 million babies were born. And I tell people, just do the math. 27,000 babies per year times 50. That’s the back of the envelope for what’s coming over the next 50 years. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to come. It’s going to be a lot lower than that. People are starting to get it. We’re not going to have 1.8 million babies born over the next 50 years.

Susan Pendergrass (05:33): Yeah, and I think about things like individual school systems building new elementary schools when there have got to be a lot of buildings that are empty. And also, won’t there be more competition for public resources between children and older people?

Ness Sandoval (05:49): Yeah. At my previous job at Northwestern, we did a project on this in one of the suburbs because we were studying seniors. There was a debate about how to spend public money. Was it for transit for seniors or transit for children? This was 2006, and this was the debate happening in Chicago. How do you provide paratransit for senior citizens when that number is increasing? We’re just having this discussion because St. Louis is leading. We’re in the top three of regions. Pittsburgh leads the country, Cleveland is second, and St. Louis is third, tied with Tampa. More people dying than babies born. We simply don’t have the number of babies born for the size of our population. And it’s because we’re a very old region. We’re the ninth oldest region in the country.

Susan Pendergrass (06:58): Yeah, I mean, we used to have 800,000 people in the city of St. Louis, right? And now we’re 280,000 or something.

Ness Sandoval (07:05): Yeah, and I was just looking at the numbers. It is very possible within two years that Kansas City will have more babies born in absolute numbers than the St. Louis metro region. That’s how few babies. I’m talking about the region. Indianapolis is about 700 babies behind St. Louis. Nashville is about 800 babies behind. All of these smaller regions are having lots of babies, and young people are moving there. Your future depends on the number of children born. And when you look at population projections, I kind of know what this looks like. When you fall below Kansas City in number of births, at some point Kansas City will be larger than St. Louis. We can project this out. We’re talking absolute births, not birth rates. We had lots of babies born 10 years ago. We were fine 10 years ago.

Susan Pendergrass (08:09): Yeah, wow.

Ness Sandoval (08:29): We can go back and talk about what happened since 2010.

Susan Pendergrass (08:35): Yeah, please. I’m curious what did happen. I know you call it the death spiral when there’s more deaths than births, but how did we get into this?

Ness Sandoval (08:41): So I moved here for the Great Recession. I moved in 2008 to start my job at SLU. And there was hope when I got here. There was some positive momentum happening. I think the region took it for granted that it didn’t have to do anything. We just have to be St. Louis. We don’t have to do anything. Unfortunately, Nashville came on the scene. Then you started to see regions change. Regions thinking we need to get young. And St. Louis absolutely did nothing. Since I’ve lived here, there’s been a lot of resistance to economic development in the region. Nashville, I think it was the popularity of being young, being pro-development. I went to Nashville to actually look at it, like why are young people there? And I went to Vanderbilt. And I saw this really interesting integration between the city and Vanderbilt University. That does not exist here in St. Louis. Making it a vibrant, cohesive, urban experience.

Susan Pendergrass (09:47): Yeah. Right. Now you step off campus at SLU and you’re in an area you don’t want to walk at night.

Ness Sandoval (10:00): Yeah, and even if it was WashU, right. And then you can talk about the Loop. It never recovered from COVID, traffic is down. I think the region has really struggled to attract young people to stay here and live here.

Susan Pendergrass (10:13): Well, we’ve been looking into the issue of crime in St. Louis quite a bit, and I know it’s down and everyone’s celebrating that fact, but I’m not sure when you survey people and ask how they feel walking alone at night, that it’s changed all that much. Even if the number of murders are down, I don’t know that people feel safer walking alone at night, and that’s got to have an impact on whether you want to stay in St. Louis after you have kids.

Ness Sandoval (10:47): Yeah. I think in the city you move out to the suburbs. The challenge is they work and you live for affordability. So many suburbs are against new development, even though they can develop. We see these debates in Chesterfield, that debate in Creve Coeur, several debates out in St. Charles. They don’t even talk about Jefferson County, because they’re celebrating voting down housing. My point is if you don’t want to build housing, Indianapolis is going to build it. Columbus is going to build it. Nashville is building it. We are no longer in the top 50 in new housing permits in the country. We’re 58th.

Susan Pendergrass (11:34): Why though? Is it because there’s not demand, or is supply being constrained?

Ness Sandoval (11:42): Supply is being constrained. Part of it is, when I speak to people, they say it’s going to hurt my home values. People want supply down. But you understand there’s a consequence to this. And home values are always good in St. Louis. But again, we always say there’s a city that we can look to that’s our future, and that’s Pittsburgh. If you really study Pittsburgh and look at it, you’re like, wow, there’s a lot of things we can learn as a city, and say this is not what we want to be. Pittsburgh leads the country in discounted rates on home sales. When people offer their price, most people do not get the price that they want. It’s a significant discount because the demand’s not there. We are about 20 years behind Pittsburgh.

Susan Pendergrass (12:25): Wow. I think a lot, in what I do, about the educational offerings in the region. Before we were recording we were talking about Texas. Texas, number one, doesn’t have an income tax, and also you can pick your child’s school from the get-go. They have hundreds, if not thousands of charter schools. And now they have a private school choice program that I think 250,000 families apply to. And Missouri has an extremely limited private school choice program, maybe 6,000 or 7,000 kids in the state, and not even the ability within St. Louis County to go outside of these tiny little districts. You can’t even go from Clayton to Brentwood. People really feel strongly about this and fight the idea of opening up the county and letting kids go within the county to any school district, and then the legislature fights it every year. And I’m like, we are just becoming less and less competitive.

Ness Sandoval (13:36): I don’t think people understand. I do a lot of work with schools now. We’re going to lose at a minimum 100,000 children under 15 by 2045. This loss is built into the system based on 27,000 births right now. The numbers are starting to show up in kindergarten. We have a smaller kindergarten class, a smaller first grade class coming in. And so a lot of schools are like, wait a minute, what’s going on? This is just starting. You have another 20 years, because we have these large cohorts that were still born after the Great Recession that are going to be replaced by smaller cohorts coming in. And there is no significant migration of children coming into the region.

Susan Pendergrass (14:28): So there are going to be difficult staffing decisions, and people don’t want to hear it. Like, we cannot continue to hire more teachers.

Ness Sandoval (14:32): You have to close schools. You have to close schools, have to merge schools. I’m doing some work in Parkway. People should not be surprised. Parkway is having meetings this month about what Parkway looks like going forward, and people are discussing consolidation. Rockwood is talking about a 15% decline in 10 years. Go out another 10 years, Rockwood will be talking about school consolidation. St. Charles will be talking about school consolidation in the old St. Charles area, the city of St. Charles. This is coming. Everybody focuses on the city and says the city needs to close schools. But you will see a discussion, I think, between Clayton and Brentwood.

Susan Pendergrass (15:06): For sure. Clayton had 2,500 kids. Now they’ve got closer to 2,000. I mean, that’s teachers, that’s buildings. And I know in Indianapolis, I’ve talked to a superintendent in that area. All parents can pick a public school. And he was like, I had some under-enrolled elementary schools and it was great for me because I put a language immersion program in one to bring parents in. I think the resistance to this idea is all about not wanting kids who aren’t paying property taxes, but I think it’s going to flip. Then you’ll be like, we’ve got to fill these seats. We’re paying the same teacher for 18 seats that we could pay for 22 kids. At some point they’re going to have to start laying off teachers. So I think there are some very difficult decisions ahead that you can see now, and there are things that could be done now, like at least not filling open positions.

Ness Sandoval (16:16): I think universities are seeing this, because many of them are relying on tuition and those dollars are not coming in. A smart university has to make cuts because it doesn’t get any better next year or the following year. There will be fewer students coming in. So universities that want to survive are making necessary cuts to survive.

Ness Sandoval (16:45): Again, we don’t know what the bottom of the birth decline looks like. We just happen to live in a state and a region that has seen a significant decline in children. I keep saying we’re modeling the future for people, either as a good or bad thing. They’re like, we want to be like St. Louis, or we don’t want to do what they did.

Ness Sandoval (17:13): I think a lot of people are starting to understand this. It’s like, we’re letting our children go, and we’re not doing a very good job of trying to keep them here. When you had 1.8 million births, you had enough to let children leave your region, leave the state. You don’t have that luxury anymore. Our models show the region should have anywhere between 1.3 million to a million births coming in over the next 50 years. We hope it’s not a million births, because that means you have an 800,000 decline in your population under 50. Or it’s 1.3 million births, which is only a 500,000 decline. But that’s coming.

Susan Pendergrass (17:43): How does immigration factor into it? Because I remember the last time we talked, you said that St. Louis is not very immigration friendly. And of course, the current national environment is not very immigration friendly.

Ness Sandoval (18:03): Missouri and St. Louis cannot rely on immigration to save it. It’s not a state that immigrants are going to come to in large numbers. They’re going to go to Florida. Miami leads the country. Even though domestic migration has people leaving, international migrants are going there as their top destination. They’re going to Philadelphia, they’re going to New York. We get immigrants who come here, but it’s a very small number, like 6,000 a year. We’re not even in the top tier as a top 25 metropolitan region. And Missouri is not either. So Missouri has to rely on domestic migration.

The data will show that probably for the decade, there will be more people dying than babies born in Missouri. Missouri will start to have from a natural perspective more people dying than babies born. And 91 counties across the whole state will have more people dying than babies born. So Missouri will become dependent for growth on domestic migration.

Susan Pendergrass (19:29): Or do we just accept that we’re not going to grow anymore? What’s the impact of that?

Ness Sandoval (19:33): Again, it’s going to be specific. I do think the Springfield area is going to grow, the Branson area, there’s growth. Part of this is retirement, I think. Kansas City is growing.

Susan Pendergrass (19:42): Why Kansas City more than St. Louis? What’s attracting younger people to Kansas City that is not happening here?

Ness Sandoval (19:49): Kansas City is a younger region. St. Louis is a fairly old region. Kansas City is a lot younger and it has a large Latino population, and that’s the largest growing population in the country, birth-rate wise. Latinos are now the second largest population in Kansas City. They surpassed the Black population, which I think even shocked me, because we thought we knew this was coming, but we thought this was going to be post-2030. The fact that it already happened shows just how many Latinos are moving there. And then you have an exodus of Black residents leaving Kansas City as well as St. Louis. I always tell people, when you have young Black families leave or young Black adults leave, those children ultimately leave too. And so that’s part of the story.

Ness Sandoval (20:48): When young people leave, the children that traditionally were born to those young people are now being born in Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston. The number one challenge for St. Louis and the state is the decline in births. If that doesn’t change, then you’re going to see that decline start to show up in five to ten years in our schools.

Ness Sandoval (21:17): And the private schools will simply go out of business because that’s dictated by the private market. Or they’ll do what many of the Catholic schools are doing. They think, we’re going to have middle school now, or we’re going to be K through 12. But then what about the parochial schools? There’s no growth. They’re just taking children out of other schools and putting them in their school system.

Ness Sandoval (21:45): And so again, I go back to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is about how do we manage population decline? The city is growing a little bit, but 100% of the growth in terms of the losses is in the suburbs. And that’s going to happen in St. Louis. When this loss starts to show up in the demographic accounting, most of the loss is going to be outside of the city of St. Louis. It’s going to be in the Chesterfield areas. It’s going to be in St. Charles.

Susan Pendergrass (22:18): So what could be done from a policy perspective? Chesterfield is trying to have this arts and entertainment district. They put in Topgolf and the concert venues. They’re trying to attract younger people there. Is it working?

Ness Sandoval (22:34): It’s not working. I mean, they have the same slight increase. I just posted this yesterday. People are shocked. The growth is in non-family households in Chesterfield. If you look at the new development, I call it downtown West Chesterfield. These are million-dollar homes, very expensive. Very few families with kids are there. These are empty nesters or dual-income, no-kids households. It’s very expensive for young families to get into Chesterfield today, when your entry-level home that was $170,000 in 1980 is $600,000 today. These are the challenges.

Susan Pendergrass (23:23): So build more starter homes?

Ness Sandoval (23:32): You need more entry-level homes. I’m not even going to use the word affordable. You need attainable homes for two incomes. And they can be built. But what I’ve heard is that a lot of cities do not want these homes. They want the $600,000 to $700,000 homes because of taxes. And so there is this tension there.

Ness Sandoval (23:56): Parkway and Rockwood are going to look very different in 30 years. They were very attractive amenities for young families with children. But I look at the data, and my kids are in Parkway. These schools are under-enrolled. You go and objectively look at the classrooms, you’re like, there should be 30 kids in these rooms and there’s 15. It’s great for me as a parent. I’m glad there’s only 15 kids for my fourth grader. One of the classes in Parkway Central, in the middle school, in his math class, there are eight students. I love it as a parent, but as someone who looks at the data, this is not sustainable.

Susan Pendergrass (24:45): Yeah, lots of one-on-one. Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out what would cause a renaissance in St. Louis. It doesn’t feel super safe. It has some great amenities and a great food scene and now MLS soccer. What would it take? Well, number one, you do have the school system problem where the St. Louis public school system is kind of a dumpster fire. So people want to move out if they have small children.

Ness Sandoval (25:32): Yeah, the decision to move out is made within the first three years once the baby’s born. We can see that in the data. When we moved from Chicago, because we lived in the city of Chicago, we wanted to live in the city of St. Louis. I think most people who move from Philadelphia or Boston are living in the city. We thought the city of St. Louis would be offering the same amenities. Because of the Great Recession, I came a year before my family, and we soon realized the city of St. Louis was not the city of Chicago in terms of amenities. And so we ended up in St. Charles. And I think most people make that same decision.

Susan Pendergrass (26:25): Yeah, my husband and I moved right into the city.

Ness Sandoval (26:27): We see it in the data. People are moving into the city from Philadelphia, from Boston, from Houston. But then, like me, if you have children and you’re not going to pay for private school, because that’s a tax in many ways, they’re going to exit out. And then with the Catholic schools closing in the city, there are going to be fewer options.

Susan Pendergrass (26:50): Yeah. But the public transportation is no good. I mean, there are things.

Ness Sandoval (26:57): And it’s interesting. We did see a kind of experiment during COVID. When COVID happened, the Catholic schools in the county opened up. A lot of families wanted their children in face-to-face instruction. So they left the city. They did not stay. So we had kind of a quasi-experimental design there. Education was very important.

Ness Sandoval (27:26): A lot of people left the city because of that and never came back. And that started before COVID. But I think this idea of school choice is something where parents want it. We have enough anecdotal evidence. When Normandy closed, the school system closed, families moved to Normandy to get their kids into Francis Howell. There’s enough evidence to show that families want to make these decisions. The question would be, would Parkway accept all of the students that would want to be in Parkway?

Susan Pendergrass (27:56): Yeah, the law would have to say that they would have to. You couldn’t let them pick and choose.

Ness Sandoval (28:15): Yeah. And so the question is, you have a lot of people who would love to be in Parkway. I gave a talk at Marquette and I was shocked because a good percentage of the students there were saying those public school students, but the parents had left to get out to West County for their children. So the question is, do you just let the private market dictate this? Those who can leave the city will ultimately leave the city and get out to West County.

Susan Pendergrass (28:50): There’s movement out. And I think in terms of domestic migration, to get parents to move in, you can go to our northern border, Iowa. The state pays for private school tuition. Oklahoma to the south, the state pays for private school tuition. Kansas, you can go to any public school in the state. It’s 100% open enrollment. Arkansas is one of the strongest for school choice, both public and private. I think we’re going to be surrounded by it and just have our arms folded across our chest. Because Parkway doesn’t want all those kids coming, or Rockwood doesn’t want all those kids coming. Parents are simply going to move across the border to a state where they can pick any public or private school. I’ve talked to some parents who have reached out to say, I’m thinking about moving to the region, is it true I can’t pick a school? And I’m like, it is true. You cannot pick a school. And I think they’re like, forget it. I’m not going to make this big decision on where to buy a house. I think if we don’t do things that are family friendly, and if we don’t get crime under control in some way, or have a 911 system where when you call somebody responds, I think it’s interesting that St. Louis will become this example for the nation of what a dying city looks like.

Ness Sandoval (30:08): We have three examples today: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Tampa is kind of unique because it is a destination for retirees. The Wall Street Journal has an article today on Cleveland, the renaissance of downtown Cleveland. And Detroit too, it’s a renaissance.

Susan Pendergrass (30:29): Wow. What about Detroit now? So St. Louis hasn’t figured out our renaissance yet.

Ness Sandoval (30:49): And to be honest with you, I think it will be hard. I’m not pro anything, but I find this whole debate about the city and county interesting. I’m not from here, so I don’t have this history of growing up here. But I think objectively, when I look at the budget of the city of St. Louis and compare it to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is a little bit bigger. It’s got 25,000 more people. But their budget is significantly smaller than St. Louis City’s budget. Part of me wonders, because the city is both a city and a county, it doesn’t have enough people or revenue to operate as both. And this is what’s helping Pittsburgh out. This is what’s helping Cleveland out, because that county revenue is spread among more taxpayers. In St. Louis City, the county functions are spread among a dwindling number of taxpayers. The city probably cannot be a county anymore. There’s just too few taxpayers to provide both city services and county services.

Ness Sandoval (32:08): I looked at these budgets and I’m like, my gosh, why is St. Louis’s budget so much more? I’m talking not a little bit more, a lot more than Pittsburgh’s budget. Pittsburgh is having trouble. And I don’t see the long-term fiscal situation turning around for the city because it’s got to provide all of these services. The tax base is going to decline. The next three years are probably going to see population loss in the city. The numbers just came out in March, but we’ll get the numbers in May. It’ll probably lead the country again in population decline for large cities.

Susan Pendergrass (32:58): Are we still a top 20 city? We’re number one in population decline, but what about in population size?

Ness Sandoval (33:01): We’re number one in decline. Last year, St. Louis City was number one. We’re declining. We’re not in the top 20 yet, but we’re very close. If we go back to 2020, we’re smaller than we were in 2020. The only reason we’re not number one in decline is because we had so many immigrants that offset our domestic migration loss. But this will be an interesting 2030 census, because it’ll be the first time the region will go into a census with more people dying than babies born. In the last census, we had about 75,000 natural growth. We’re looking at about 25,000 to 30,000 natural decline going into this census without any domestic migration. I tell people that this story is just starting. We have 74 years of the century left.

Ness Sandoval (34:18): I’m just trying to get people to move from the mindset that this is 2010 St. Louis. You don’t have 36,000 births anymore. You have 27,000 and it’s declining, one of the fastest declines in the country. Because of it, we’re aging very fast, and so we have to shift. The region has to make a choice that we start to organize our economy around senior citizens. There’s lots of money to be made from senior citizens, but we will never be viewed as Nashville or Austin as a place for young people.

Susan Pendergrass (34:52): Absolutely. That Route 64 corridor is just going to be all retirement homes.

Ness Sandoval (35:04): We won’t be talking about single family homes anymore. We’ll be talking about senior housing. We’ll be talking about a workforce that’s going to work with seniors instead of a workforce for children. And there is money to be made in that economy. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. But again, we can look at other parts of the country where this transition has happened. Local government spending is being consumed by senior citizens, the healthcare of senior citizens, the paratransit of seniors. Seniors will lose their ability to drive. That cost typically gets covered by local governments. And so you will not be providing buses for children. You’ll be providing paratransit to get seniors to their doctors. Churches will have to think about being accessible to seniors. I go to Church of the Ascension and they are not prepared. At Easter, one of the Masses, one-third of this section was senior citizens in wheelchairs. The churches are simply not prepared for a parish that’s going to be 50% of the population at 70 years old and older. Restaurants have to think about this.

Susan Pendergrass (36:30): Wow, that’s crazy. Well, interesting stuff. I hope you’ll come back and talk about this more. And certainly I’m very interested in reading everything that you write about what St. Louis can do. We need to figure out a renaissance.

Ness Sandoval (36:51): We’ve got to get younger. The kids are giving us a try. They’re coming to school, they’re coming here because they have hopes. We just have not responded the way we need to. A lot of companies are starting to recognize this. I talked to the mayor and said, you need to be a more proactive voice on this. But the region, this is not a city of St. Louis issue. This is a St. Charles issue, a Jefferson County issue, a Chesterfield issue. Most of the people live outside of St. Louis city. The loss we’re projecting is going to come from the suburbs. And that’s what’s happening in Pittsburgh, that’s what’s happening in Cleveland. 100% of the demographic loss is in the suburbs.

Susan Pendergrass (37:21): Yeah. Wow, that’s crazy. Well, fascinating. Thank you so much for explaining it. I don’t want to be depressed about it, but it’s not super optimistic. We’ll find a silver lining. Thanks, Dr. Sandoval.

Ness Sandoval (37:59): All right, thank you very much.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post St. Louis Demographics and the Future of the Region with Ness Sandoval appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once again, Missouri has been outdone by a neighbor. On the very important issue of early literacy, we should look closely at the move Oklahoma just made. With the signing of Senate Bill 1778, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has essentially ended the era of social promotion for children who can’t read. Oklahoma’s “Strong Readers Act” provides a roadmap that Missouri should follow.

One of the more controversial aspects of the law relates to third-grade retention. Starting in the 2027–28 school year, students who score below the basic level on the Oklahoma state test (the equivalent of Missouri’s MAP test) and who cannot pass a secondary literacy assessment may be required to repeat the grade. While retention is an unpopular strategy, the bill balances this with a multi-tiered system of support. This means schools will use statewide screenings to identify issues as early as kindergarten, triggering immediate interventions such as small-group tutoring and summer academies. Missouri should adopt a similar mandate. By making retention a real possibility, the law forces the system to pivot toward early intervention.

Unfortunately, Missouri’s attempts at literacy reform have stagnated this legislative session. Despite broad recognition that our reading scores are headed in the wrong direction, Missouri lawmakers are stuck in debates about which test to use, the negative effects of retention, and local control. There are still a few weeks left for them to resolve their differences. They owe it to our students to stop passing them through a failing system and start ensuring that every student is equipped with the reading skills they need to succeed.

The post Oklahoma Is Holding Itself Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In his January 30 op-ed for the Post-Dispatch, Kansas political scientist Michael Smith called Governor Mike Kehoe’s proposal to cut income taxes in Missouri a “near carbon copy” of Governor Sam Brownback’s 2012 income tax cuts in Kansas.

But Kehoe’s proposal for Missouri has large and important differences from Brownback’s. It isn’t a “carbon copy” at all.

The single largest flaw in Brownback’s tax cut was a peculiar change that eliminated all income taxes on “pass-through” business entities such as limited liability corporations (LLCs) without changing the tax code for other types of businesses. Even the right-leaning Tax Foundation criticized the provision at the time. Put simply, it didn’t encourage investment; it ended income taxes for one type of business while keeping them for others.

Not surprisingly, many businesses changed their corporate structure to suddenly become pass-through entities. The Tax Foundation found that over 390,000 entities claimed the exemption by 2015, more than double what was projected. These businesses didn’t invest in the state, hire more workers, or do anything other than change their legal status. Tax revenues declined significantly, and little growth followed.

Kansas also made critical mistakes in how it implemented income-tax cuts. The state slashed its top income-tax rate by nearly 30 percent immediately in 2012, with plans to cut even further. At the same time, Kansas’s elected officials failed to rein in spending. The combination of the pass-through exemption, immediate and deep rate cuts, and lack of spending discipline during this period fostered a fiscal crisis that could have been avoided. Even worse, the timing of these actions gave the state little room to adjust when projections weren’t borne out.

Kehoe’s proposal is fundamentally different. It asks Missouri voters whether they want to eliminate the income tax. If they do, the state can then expand and adjust its sales tax to replace the lost revenue. While many details remain to be finalized (and Missourians have every right to be skeptical while awaiting those details), the plan ensures that income tax rates can only be lowered after meeting revenue benchmarks, meaning Missouri would only cut taxes when it has the fiscal capacity to do so.

Setting aside the phasing out of the income tax, addressing Missouri’s outdated sales tax system is long overdue. While states nationwide are broadening what they tax, Missouri’s system remains narrow, with much of what is sold today escaping taxation entirely. Larger exemptions like home sales and healthcare services might make sense, but other current exemptions clearly don’t.

When you buy a book in person at Barnes & Noble or have the same book delivered to your house by Amazon, you pay the sales tax. However, when you buy the same text as a download to your Kindle, you pay no sales tax. Correcting such inconsistencies in Missouri’s tax code can level the playing field while expanding the sales tax base at the same time.

Opponents can point to Missouri’s western border all they want, but Missouri has other neighbors besides Kansas. Look at Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, which have all cut income tax rates significantly in recent years without any of the issues Kansas had. Look to our southeast border to see Tennessee, a state that has been growing rapidly for years thanks, in part, to having no state income tax. This isn’t surprising, as decades of economic research have shown consistently that states without income taxes grow faster economically than those with them.

As the Tax Foundation, which was highly critical of Kansas’ tax cut, wrote in 2024 about the larger picture of state tax cuts between 2012 and 2022:

In fact, far from tax cuts precipitating a Kansas-like crisis, tax collections have risen more on average in the past decade in the 25 states that cut income taxes (31.9 percent in inflation-adjusted terms) than in the four states and D.C. that raised them (27.8 percent).

The lesson from Kansas isn’t that eliminating the income tax is a bad idea, it’s that implementation matters. There’s no doubt that states without income taxes are growing faster than Missouri, and our state needs a new approach to keep pace in the national competition for families and businesses. Voters deserve the full picture, not an overly simplistic “Kansas” bogeyman, when debating our state’s tax future.

The post Missouri Doesn’t Have To Be Kansas appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For the past several years, the Missouri Legislature has considered letting parents choose a public school in another public school district than the one in which they live—also known as open enrollment. It seems that DESE and the BOE are preparing for the moment that the legislature takes another crack at this idea. And by preemptively adding the word “voluntary,”, they have signaled that they prefer a weak and less effective version of this policy.

Currently, there are sixteen states, including our neighbors Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, that require all public school districts to accept transfer students, provided that there is an open seat available. According to the Reason Foundation, students using open enrollment accounted for about 7 percent of publicly funded students in those states. In other words, open enrollment doesn’t have a massive impact on the system, but it can be a game changer for the students who use it.

In states such as Ohio, which have limited open enrollment to only those districts that voluntarily agree to accept students, high-income suburban districts have declined to participate. Thus, kids in Ohio’s largest urban districts, such as Akron or Cincinnati, don’t have any feasible open enrollment options. They would have to leapfrog over the suburban rings that surround their cities.

Missouri was called out last year in a national study for having district lines that mimic old residential red lines. That legacy could be ameliorated by making those lines more porous and less exclusionary. Regardless of the executive branch’s stated priorities, let’s not start the conversation on open enrollment with an eye toward a weak policy.

The post Voluntary Open Enrollment Means No Open Enrollment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A version of this commentary appeared in The Heartlander

Tradeoffs and give-and-take are at the heart of politics. We’re told that the politicians who are willing to compromise are the ones who “get things done.” But not every tradeoff is worth it. Case in point: In the Missouri legislature, passage of a relatively weak open-enrollment measure has been discussed as a “both/and” that could be tied to passage of another bill that strips the State Board of Education (BOE) of its authority to accredit (or refuse to accredit) Missouri’s public schools. If that’s the offer, it deserves a hard no from legislators.

I don’t often find myself defending the BOE, and for good reason. It is fair to wonder what a school district has to do in this state to lose accreditation. Out of 517 districts, 511 (98.8 percent) are fully accredited, six are provisionally accredited, and none are unaccredited. The Ferguson-Florissant school district is fully accredited despite the fact that only 20 percent of its students are proficient in English language arts, and just 16 percent are proficient in math. Hazelwood, another fully accredited district, shows similarly troubling numbers: 25 percent proficiency in English and 15 percent in math. The Clarkton C-4 district in Missouri’s Bootheel is fully accredited even though 85 percent of students scored below grade level in English/language arts or math last year. Sadly, these are just three examples among many.

The question is: if the BOE isn’t holding schools accountable, what should be done about it? According to the proponents of Senate Bill 360, the solution is to strip the BOE of the power it seems so reluctant to use. The bill would prohibit the BOE from using academic performance to classify schools for accreditation purposes. Districts would instead be allowed to hire outside accreditation agencies to evaluate them. It should be obvious that such agencies would have a strong incentive to tell the districts that hire them what they want to hear.

If the fates of these two bills are linked, what do Missourians get in exchange for essentially throwing in the towel on accountability for school districts? They get House Bill 711, which would allow for open enrollment . . . sort of. It would only let up to 5 percent of students transfer out of any district, and more importantly, it wouldn’t require districts to accept students who wanted to transfer in. Compared to what our neighbors in Kansas and Oklahoma have, this is entry-level open enrollment at best, and it isn’t worth letting the districts themselves decide whether or not they deserve to be accredited.

There is no law of nature stating that the BOE can’t hold districts accountable for student performance. The Missouri Legislature could also make the BOE do its job. In fact, we are about to have four new members of the 8-person BOE, and they are likely to bring fresh energy and commitment to accountability.

The research on high accountability and improved student outcomes is clear, so the rubber-stamping of school accreditation needs to stop. The state, which funds public education to the tune of $6.6 billion each year, has a responsibility to both students and taxpayers to make sure that money is being spent to prepare students for college or the workforce.

If a “compromise” is on offer here it is a troubling example of the misplaced priorities of Missouri’s educational establishment. Who are they protecting here—students trapped in failing schools, or school districts threatened by the prospect of being held responsible for their performance?

The post A Bad Deal for Missouri’s Children appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The 2024 results indicate that 4 in 10 Missouri 4th graders scored below the Basic level on the assessment. What does that mean? According to a researcher from the University of Virginia, “students performing below NAEP Basic level have less vocabulary knowledge and less world knowledge, which would limit their inferencing and comprehension capability.” Another researcher describes it thusly: “Below Basic on the NAEP means that a student is performing below the minimum expected level of academic achievement for their grade, indicating a lack of foundational skills and inability to demonstrate even basic mastery of the subject matter being assessed.”  The 42 percent of Missouri 4th graders who scored at below Basic last year are most likely now in the 5th grade trying to figure out what the heck their textbooks in any subject are trying to teach them.

Here is how the performance of Missouri 4th graders has changed over time.

This graph shows scale scores (NAEP is on a scale from 0 to 500). While Missouri was hovering just above the national average until 2017, we then began a steep slide that is barely leveling out.

But scores everywhere have declined because of COVID, right? Not so. In 2024, we outperformed just five states—Oregon, Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and West Virginia. Here is the same chart for Mississippi.

Twenty six years ago, we outperformed Mississippi by 16 scale score points. Now, it’s ahead of us by seven.

What will Missouri look like in 15 years, when almost half of 25-year-olds are barely literate? We have a new governor and a new commissioner of education. Perhaps these questions should be put to them.

The post Missouri Public Schools Have a Very Serious Reading Problem appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The single program started in Wisconsin in 1996 has grown to 75 school choice programs in 33 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. And in just the last few years, 10 states have implemented universal school choice programs in which all or nearly all children in the state are eligible. These states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. Alabama and Louisiana will be joining the list next year.

When the one million private school choice students are added to the 3.7 million charter school students the result is that one in five children in the United States is receiving a publicly funded education outside of traditional public schools. What was once considered controversial has become mainstream.

The post A Milestone Reached appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Universal school choice—which is what we call it when all families can choose a school, not just those who can afford private schools or afford to move to a “good” school district—is having an interesting political movement. Bipartisan efforts have led to many of the recent universal choice programs. The concept that a child might find themselves in a school that is not working well for them seems to cut across party lines. Divisive issues such as vaccines, curricula, and bullying (particularly of LGBTQ students) also make it easier to understand why children and families might feel trapped by school assignment policies.

Those invested in the traditional public school system have fought hard against opening up the system to choice. Many still cling to the idea that one school or one district can serve every need equally well. Most children probably fall into some range of being able to adapt (though not necessarily thrive) to whatever is offered at their neighborhood school. But should we continue to kid ourselves that the system will adapt to support those students who can’t seem to learn in their neighborhood school or who dread going there in the morning?

North Carolina families have just become entrusted with a big responsibility—taking ownership of their children’s education instead of accepting the default. They join families in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia, Utah, Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire. Don’t Missouri families deserve that trust?

The post And Then There Were Ten appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How would your family feel if your entire neighborhood had 5G internet access and you were still using dial-up? I’m guessing the kids might complain. After all, 5G is simply better, and sticking with an obsolete system seems like a stubborn refusal to change. That’s the situation Missouri families with school-aged children face. Just about all our neighbors wrapped up their legislative sessions by finally giving up address-based school assignments and letting parents choose where to send their children to school. We’re the last one in the neighborhood sticking with the outdated system.

• Early in their session, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed the Students First Act, which will allow families to receive up to $7,600 per year to use toward private-school tuition. The law is phased in, but by 2025, every family in the state will be able to use the program.
• Heading west, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed the Opportunity Scholarships Act. Although similar to Missouri’s Empowerment Scholarships program, this bill commits twice as much money and the scholarships are available to children statewide, not just in the largest cities as in Missouri.
• Over in Kansas, a robust public school choice bill passed last year will go into effect in fall 2024. No longer will Kansas school districts be able to opt out of accepting transfer students from other districts. Previously, each district set their own policies regarding whether or not to accept students. As of this fall, Kansas families can apply to transfer to a school of their choice.
• Oklahoma took an innovative approach to school choice in its session. All families in the state can now take a dollar-for-dollar credit against their state tax bill for up to $7,500 in private-school tuition. Homeschoolers can receive up to $1,000 off their state tax bill. And the tax credit is refundable, meaning that the state will pay families back if the tax credit is more than they owed in state taxes.
• Arkansas passed one of the most significant education reform acts this year. The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed by Governor Sanders, gives families the option of having 90 percent of their state education funding deposited into an Education Freedom Account for private-school tuition and other education expenses. By 2025–26, all Arkansas families will be able to participate.

So, there you have it. School choice is not just happening in the far-flung states of Florida, West Virginia, and Arizona.  It is literally all around us. Our neighbors have figured out what Missouri hasn’t. School assignment by address is antiquated, it isn’t what families want, and it doesn’t work.

Imagine a school district as an ice cream shop that can only stock one flavor. They’re required to do their best to satisfy every student, so if most families want vanilla, vanilla it is. If some kids show up wanting pistachio, those can be tossed in. A couple of kids want chocolate? Add a chocolate ribbon. But now some kids want bubble gum in their ice cream. Does it really make sense to insist on offering a single flavor that turns out to be vanilla-pistachio-chocolate-bubble gum? No one wants that. There is no single, secret flavor that’s everyone’s favorite.

What our neighbors seem to understand is that it is better for the kids who need pistachio ice cream to get the very best pistachio out there. Parents are in the best position to know. And they may have a pistachio kid and a bubble gum kid in the same family. Try to please everyone at once, and you end up satisfying no one.

Over half of the 50 states now have mandatory open enrollment programs that allow families to choose any public school in the state. The number of states that include private schools among the options offered is growing fast. Missouri has neither. We allow charters only as interventions in our worst performing districts, rather than opportunities for districts to expand their portfolios. We have a scholarship program that addresses the needs of children in larger communities, but not rural children. Our legislature did not have the courage or determination to overcome their differences this year to bring even voluntary open enrollment to Missouri families.

Change can’t have been easy for policymakers in neighboring states, either. But they did it. Maybe it was out of a sense of fairness to children stuck in poor-performing schools, or maybe it was because they wanted their states to be attractive to growing companies and young families. It sure would be nice if such considerations would motivate lawmakers here.

The post Missouri Becomes an Education Island appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once again, Missouri parents came up shorthanded. An admittedly weak open enrollment bill died when Missouri Senators couldn’t stop filibustering each other’s bills. A bill that would have made it easier for Missouri students to enroll in the state’s full-time virtual program met a similar fate, as did expansion of the extremely limited education savings account (ESA) program.

Nearly every family in the state of Missouri is given exactly one choice for their children’s education, and if it isn’t a fit—too bad. Or you can simply move to a neighboring state. Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, and Oklahoma trust their parents to choose a school that works for them. Enrollment is already shrinking and our resistance to change is going to shrink it even more. And guess what happens when you have fewer K-12 students? You have fewer high school graduates, fewer college students, and fewer workers. It doesn’t make Missouri look like a very attractive state.

School choice is spreading like wildfire across the country because parents have stood up and demanded it. The longer Missouri sits on the bench, either because we’re not sure it’s a good thing or because we just can’t get our priorities straight, the less families will choose to raise their children here.

The post This Is Not a Spectator Sport appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One such very bad policy idea is right of first refusal, which grants major Missouri utilities the automatic right to win all bids on new electric construction lines if they so choose. You may want to read that again. It doesn’t just give major utilities the right to bid on all projects—that goes without saying. It gives them the right to win any project they want, no matter what any other utility or construction company may bid. The idea here is to funnel projects to Missouri companies and “protect” Missouri jobs at the expense of out-of-state competitors. If you think this raises prices on consumers, as any grade school economics textbook would predict, it does. Significantly.

My former Show-Me Institute colleague Jakob Puckett wrote about this issue last year.  The same bills have been introduced again this session, so we shall return to Jakob’s arguments from last year:

Wouldn’t it be better for the legislature to propose subjecting transmission lines to competitive bidding, rather than shielding them from it? Since transmission costs are ultimately passed on to customers, it’s customers who bear the brunt, or receive the benefit, of cost-inflating or cost-saving policies.

Missouri will need more electric transmission lines built in the coming years. To build those lines at the lowest possible cost, Missouri needs more free-market activity in transmission projects, not less.

The state-based protectionism here is really something. While you frequently see such types of anti-market, anti-consumer protectionism at the national level (such as the administration’s ill-conceived plan to require only American-made products in our infrastructure efforts), you rarely see it at the state level. But here we have it. It is bad at the national level (with some exceptions, of course), but at least one can understand where it is coming from. As for this one, I’m at a complete loss. Are we really willing to cast everything aside because a company based in Arkansas that hires workers from Oklahoma might offer the best bid (and thereby save Missourians’ money) for a project near Joplin? (That’s a hypothetical project, for the record.)

As Jakob said, we need more markets in electricity, not less, and these bills power us in completely the wrong direction.

The post ROFR Makes Me ROFL appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A bill introduced in the Missouri Legislature, Senate Bill 88, would build on improving past successes in the occupational licensing sphere. It would strengthen prior licensing reciprocity legislation by reducing the maximum wait time for oversight bodies to waive requirements from six months to 45 days. This bill would also make it possible for Missouri licensing requirements to be waived for workers in states without such requirements provided they have at least three-years of applicable experience.

Ness Sandoval, a professor from St. Louis University, has written that Missouri is in a demographic winter—more people are dying in Missouri than are being born. Pair this finding with declining student enrollment in the state, one can see the need for Missouri to attract workers from out of state rather than put barriers in their path.

Against the substantial cost of licensing requirements we need to weigh the potential benefits to the quality and safety of products/services, but evidence of such benefits is underwhelming. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University conducted a meta-analysis of 19 different studies in Florida directly related to licensing and product quality. In 16% of these studies, researchers observed positive relationships between licensing and product quality, in 21% they observed a negative relationship, and in 63% they observed no relationship.

The Institute for Justice has identified nine occupations that Missouri licenses but are not licensed by at least 15 states throughout the country. For example, Missouri is one of 22 states that require a license to work as a sign-language interpreter—which entails $442 in fees, 60 credit hours of education, and two exams. Under current statute, if a sign-language interpreter with three years of experience from Kansas, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, or Ohio wanted to move to Missouri, they would have to spend the time and money to acquire a license before they could work here. The same would be true for an experienced veterinary technician from one of the 15 states that don’t require a license.

Occupational licensing increases costs to consumers, limits competition, and by its nature involves government in the free market. In some cases (e.g., physicians), such costs may be justified in order to ensure the safety of the public. But policymakers should look for ways to limit the burden of licensing to cases in which it is absolutely necessary. Embracing the policies embodied in Senate Bill 88 would be a step in this direction,

The post Senate Bill 88 and Licensing Restrictions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The twelve states with occupational licensing reciprocity are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Notably, only one of Missouri’s border states and very few midwestern states have adopted this policy.

Being on the forefront of this movement gives Missouri a competitive advantage. We’ve significantly decreased the red tape that burdens workers when they relocate. Many licensed workers can move to Missouri and continue working much more easily than if they moved to Kansas or Illinois, for example. It’s the legislative equivalent of a giant arrow above Missouri telling workers to move here.

Though there is still more work to be done, occupational licensing reciprocity was a step in the right direction. It’s icing on the cake that Missouri was one of the first states to adopt this legislation, giving us a huge advantage over surrounding states.

The post Hey Licensed Professionals: It’s Time to Move to Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The scholarships will be funded by donations to non-profits. Donors to the scholarship-granting organizations will receive a 100 percent credit on their state taxes for the amount donated. The next step is to encourage Missourians to change a child’s life by donating to the organizations. The scholarship-granting organizations can raise up to $50 million each year.

Missouri joins several other nearby states, such as Oklahoma and Iowa, that have also created school choice programs this year.  No doubt the experiences of the past year—when parents were put in the driver’s seat—brought to light that kids need choices. As Show-Me Institute analysts have repeatedly pointed out, parents support school choice, parents need school choice, and the states that give parents school choice outperform those that don’t.

It’s the dawning of a new era of parental empowerment in Missouri. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.

The post A Huge Win for Missouri Families appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What a difference a year makes. A year ago, parents across the state of Missouri were likely not even aware that the last week of January is National School Choice Week. In Missouri, school choice—at least from what I can tell from following the state legislature—is exclusively a policy for poor kids in failing urban districts. Suburban and rural Missourians don’t need school choice because their schools are “good.” Rural districts in particular are often described as “loving” their local schools regardless of how they perform. They’re the center, the heartbeat, of the community. What they provide was good enough for my parents and my grandparents, and it is fine for my kids, so the story goes.

Unfortunately, that story fell apart in 2020. Thousands of Missouri students essentially sat out the last couple of months of the last school year, especially in rural districts with technological challenges. This year, as positive COVID tests and the need to quarantine wreaked havoc on school schedules, the number of Missouri students who only had the option of fully remote learning went from around 90,000 in September to 248,000 in December. Blended learning, in which students attend school for a few days a week, and which, as a working parent, sounds like a worst-case scenario to me, peaked at around 300,000 students last December. For reference, Missouri has about 900,000 public school students.

The point is that we are halfway through a school year in which students and families from all backgrounds and all types of communities across Missouri have learned the hard way what it feels like to have only one type of education available, whether it works for them or not and regardless of how often that one type changes. And good will is beginning to slide.

A survey of Missouri parents taken in early December found that over one-quarter of parents would give their child’s remote learning experience this year a grade of “D” or “F.” Parents are worried. Last school year, about half of Missouri parents felt their children were ahead academically and less than 7 percent felt they were behind. Just ten months later, only 18 percent of Missouri parents believe their children are ahead and a troubling 37 percent believe them to be behind.

This concern reflects an erosion of trust in the public school system. Just 47 percent of Missouri parents trust the public school system to make decisions that are in the best interest of their children’s education all the time or almost all the time. Last year, that number was almost 70 percent. Sadly, the percentage of parents who never or only rarely trust the public education system has gone up by 26 points in just one year.

The antiquated system of assigning every student to one, and only one, type of education based on their address has to go. If Missouri wants to rejoin the ranks of states that attract families and businesses, it needs to create a system of education that reflects current and future conditions, not the past. Parents should be able to use public funds to enroll their children in a charter school, a private school, a micro-school, or a virtual school. Parents should be able to access public funds to get the tutoring or educational therapies their children need. Regaining the trust of parents must be earned. It should start with trusting parents first.

Our neighbors get it. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has committed to expanding K-12 education options for all Iowa students, including, but not limited to, open enrollment, education savings accounts, and expansion of charter schools. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has expanded scholarship programs for students with disabilities to include religious schools and used flexible stimulus funds to help parents in need to continue to pay for private school tuition. In addition to having more than 40 rural and suburban charter schools, Arkansas allows students the option to transfer out of failing schools. And Arkansas, it should be noted, is brave enough to call them “F” schools.

For far too long, the Missouri legislature has listened to superintendents and school boards that want to ban any form of school choice happening in their backyard. but parents were put in charge of their children’s education this year. They’ve had some time to consider it. They have concerns. And maybe now the legislature should listen to them.

The post A Crisis of Trust appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to enrollment counts taken this fall, there are about 6,000 fewer kindergartners enrolled in Missouri public schools this year than there were last year and about 9,000 fewer pre-kindergartners. That’s a ten-percent drop for kindergarten and a 30-percent drop for pre-K. Where have they gone? According to a recent article, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is “exploring” whether they are being homeschooled, have switched to a private school, or just didn’t enroll. It’s important to figure out where these children are, who is footing the bill for their education this year, and whether they’re likely to ever be public school students.

Similar to what has been reported across dozens of states, public school enrollment across all grades in Missouri is down. There are almost 25,000 students missing this year, and most of them are the youngest kids. It’s not surprising that in a year when districts are changing how and where they’re delivering education, sometimes multiple times, frustrated parents are attempting to take control and make their own calls about their children’s education. According to a national analysis by NPR, parents are passing on public school pre-K and kindergarten this year because they just don’t think virtual instruction is right for very young children. Equally, even if in-person learning is offered, they didn’t like the idea of their little ones starting school in the “weird” environment of masks and social distancing. As a result, they’re choosing to either homeschool, find a private school, or get together with friends and neighbors to create their own “micro school.”

It’s important to ask: If these children are beginning their elementary school experience somewhere else, then what is the likelihood that they will return to their assigned public school once things return to normal? Doesn’t it seem likely that some percentage of these parents will make their choice permanent?

In addition to having a better understanding of how and where Missouri students are receiving education this year, we also need to know where these children are because they come (or go) with dollars attached. The state of Missouri allocates roughly $6,500 for each public-school student, with additions for low-income students, students with disabilities, and students who are learning English as a second language. This is known as the “state adequacy target,” as it is the amount considered “adequate” to provide a high-quality education. What amount is adequate to educate students who aren’t even enrolled?

Enrollment counts and attendance rates, which are used to determine state funding, are probably a little crazy this year. But districts have an out. Missouri law allows districts to use the highest of the last two years’ enrollment numbers. And this year only, they can assume an attendance rate of 94 percent. There are countless stories about the difficulty of taking attendance this year, but the assumption that the attendance is actually 94 percent is ridiculous. In terms of the bottom line, the state could potentially spend over $100 million per year for the next two years on 15,000 students who were never enrolled in a public school. To reiterate, children who were never public-school students may be counted as such and funded as such until the 2022–23 school year.

While the state of Missouri will be sending millions of dollars to districts for students they never educated, parents are scrambling to figure out education solutions that work for their families and, in many cases, how to pay for them. They deserve a little relief. One free option for parents would be to enroll in the Missouri virtual program, MOCAP, which should be seamless this year and not require district permission. Equally, all parents, regardless of their income, should be able to create learning pods with neighbors and friends, and they should be able to access a portion of their state education funding to do so. Finally, some states, such as Oklahoma, are helping parents who are struggling financially cover private school tuition. Missouri should do the same.

One outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is that State education funds are being misdirected to districts for thousands of students who were never enrolled, while parents are paying out of pocket for their children’s education. It’s time for bold action to help every Missouri student access an education environment that works for them and their family, not just the ones who can afford to pay for it on their own.

The post Where Are the Kindergartners? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the latest from Susan Pendergrass

Parents are angry and confused right now. Many are receiving mixed messages from school districts. Critical information arrives late in the process and changes frequently. It’s up to school districts and the Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education to fix this. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen before school starts this fall—and parents need help right now. So we’ve created a resource page designed to help parents figure out what their options are and what sort of questions they ought to be asking. Of course, this is only a small subset of what is out there, but we hope you find the below information useful. Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might benefit.

Questions parents should be asking superintendents, school board members and legislators:

1. Can I have a portion of my child’s state funding to purchase in-person learning if my district isn’t offering it?
2. Will the district make teachers available for micro-schools for those who want and need them?
3. Could the district open some school buildings for students to do their virtual learning with an on-site teacher assisting?
4. What if I don’t have high-speed internet access? Hot spots were insufficient last spring.
5. I don’t like my school’s virtual education programming. Can I switch to MOCAP after the school year starts?
6. Why hasn’t the state waived the requirement for receiving district permission to enroll in MOCAP this year?
7. My child can’t attend school in person. Can I have state funds to enroll them in a high-quality virtual provider of my choice?
8. If I decide to have my child stay virtual, do I need to register as a homeschooler?

Options that may or may not be available for this school year:

Missouri Course Access Program (MOCAP) – MOCAP has 11 providers of full-time virtual education that have been vetted and approved by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). A law passed in 2018 gives all Missouri students the right to request enrollment in any of the providers. Currently, districts are required to assess the request and determine if virtual education is a good fit for the student or not. Parents can appeal a denial of permission. Districts have an unlimited amount of time to respond to MOCAP enrollment requests.

UPDATE September 22, 2020 – 10 Day Deadline for MOCAP Review

Missouri Virtual Ed

Letter: Missouri online program virtual lifesaver for students

Missouri committee may propose changes to virtual education program

Missouri panel to request temporary removal of districts serving as MOCAP gatekeeper

Free virtual resources:

Khan Academy

NoRedInk

Virtual resources that cost money:

Virtual Stream tutors

Florida Virtual School

Micro-schools – A group of 10-15 multi-age students with one teacher. There are several national networks, but parents would have to work fast to create a micro-school at this point. Any that aren’t charter schools charge tuition.

What Is a Micro School? And Where Can You Find One? (edweek)

Acton Academies:

Acton Academy

Lighthouse International 

Prenda network:

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More on the Micro-school Movement (Forbes)

What are “micro-schools” and “pandemic pods”? (Today)

Why and How to Open a Microschool (gettingsmarter)

PODs – Groups of families that agree to have their children learn in-person together while limiting their access to anyone outside the group. These are being formed in Missouri, but with no public assistance.

Parents turn to “pods” as a schooling solution

YMCA of Metropolitan Columbus offering learning pods

College Station Taekwondo business offering learning pods

Kansas City YMCA

At least one parent has started a POD business

Watch: How to Start an Education Pod

“Little Pod Platoons” Are Education’s Answer to Lockdowns This Fall

“Pandemic Pods” Are Fundamentally Reshaping K-12 Education

Microschools on the rise in Arizona, with COVID providing added boost (AZ Mirror)

Parents Turn to “Pods” for School During Pandemic (WebMD)

Scholarships – Giving state money directly to parents to pay for tuition or tutoring. These are not available in Missouri, but could be. Each governor received flexible stimulus money under the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEERs) program. Governor Parson has received $54 million. So far, Governor Parson has allocated $24 million to higher education. The allocation of the remaining $30 million is unknown. Other governors have used portions of their GEERs funds to create scholarships for low-income students.

Oklahoma used GEER funding to create a scholarship that will help low-income families purchase curriculum content, tutoring services, and technology 

South Carolina used GEER funding to create SAFE Scholarships

Governors Direct Federal COVID-19 Aid to Private School Scholarships (EDweek)

The post Fall 2020 Educational Resources for Missouri Parents appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In some states—Oklahoma, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, to name a few—governors ve used flexible federal stimulus funding provided through the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) to directly help these parents. In South Carolina, Governor McMaster created the Safe Access to Flexible Education (SAFE) grant program for low-income students. Students who apply can receive up to $6,500 to help them pay tuition at a private school. Oklahoma’s Governor Stitt used GEER funds to create the Stay in School Fund, which gives low-income parents $6,500 to keep their children in private schools.

These seem like great ideas that are addressing an immediate need. In a perplexing move, Missouri’s governor has dedicated $15 million of the just over $54 million in GEER funds received to a Transportation Supplement Grant program. This money will eventually go to districts to cover additional COVID-related transportation costs. Other than PPE and cleaning buses more often, I can’t imagine what these costs would be, especially when so many districts are all virtual. But maybe it’s just me. Districts can request reimbursement for any COVID-related transportation costs between now and September of next year and they have until September of 2022 to make the requests.

The Secretary of Education sent a letter to every governor with the following guidance:

This extraordinarily flexible emergency block grant empowers you to decide how best to meet the current needs of students, schools (including charter schools and non-public schools), postsecondary institutions, and other education-related organizations in your State so that faculty continue to teach and students continue to learn. My Department will not micromanage how you spend these funds, but I encourage you, at a time when so many school boards, superintendents, and institutions of higher education have had to close their brick and mortar campuses for the balance of the school year, to focus these resources on ensuring that all students continue to learn most likely through some form of remote learning. They and their families are depending on your leadership to ensure that they don’t fall behind.

We have thousands of desperate families with immediate needs, and yet we’re putting millions of dollars in emergency relief into an account so that two years from now districts can request reimbursement for face masks and bus cleaning? I don’t get it.

The post Is It Just Me? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As a researcher, I can’t stress enough that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I’m still struck by the following graphic.

This graphic was created by the Urban Institute for their 2015 report, Breaking the Curve: Promises and Pitfalls of Using NAEP Data to Assess the State Role in Student Achievement. The states in the bottom left quadrant are those that both performed in the bottom half of all states on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2013, and also saw their NAEP scores decline between 2003 and 2013, after controlling for student demographics. And the states in this bottom left quadrant are mostly states with little or no school choice. The states in orange had no charter schools in 2013, and those in blue only allowed charter schools as punishment for low performance. Oklahoma gave up using charters as a last resort for low-performing districts in 2015, but Missouri has not. Iowa and Wyoming had fewer than 400 students in charter schools in 2013. By contrast, Florida and Texas had over 200,000 students enrolled in charter schools that same year. Pennsylvania had almost 120,000 charter school students and New Jersey and Massachusetts had about 30,000 each.

If school choice killed public education, this graphic would look a lot different. I’m perplexed that the states in the bottom left quadrant, including Missouri, think that taking a strong stance against school choice is a winning strategy.

The post States with School Choice Reap the Benefits appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The State of the Heartland Factbook 2018, a joint effort by the Walton Family Foundation and the Brookings Institution, uses 26 different socioeconomic measures to detail the performance of the 19 states that compose America’s Heartland. This data is compiled into the full report, and is accompanied by an interesting interactive database.

This new information makes it easy to compare Missouri to the other states in our region. However, the comparison is hardly flattering. The two best examples of Missouri’s stagnation are the change over time in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the total value of everything produced by the people and companies of the state, and standard of living. Measuring the change in GDP from 2010 to 2016, Missouri only grew faster than two nearby states (Mississippi and Louisiana), averaging a 0.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Most of the other states had a CAGR of over 1.0 percent.

Standard of living (which the authors measure as GDP per capita) showed practically identical results, with Missouri once again coming in third from the bottom (again ahead of only Mississippi and Louisiana). While Missouri showed a positive CAGR of 0.5 percent in standard of living, the majority of the states where data was reported averaged at least a 1.0 percent CAGR from 2010 to 2016.

The story was the same with regard to wage growth. Missouri held its popular position of third from the bottom, a CAGR of 0.4 percent from 2010 to 2016.

Clearly, there is work to be done in Missouri if we want to climb to a position where we are competitive with the states surrounding us. Policy initiatives that spur economic growth will be key in helping turn the Show-Me state into a better place to work and live.

The post Are Missouri’s Neighbors Passing It By? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.