Missouri’s property tax system works best when the assessments are accurate, the tax base is wide, and the rates are low. That combination will help grow Missouri’s economy for everyone while properly funding the necessary functions of local government. However, a radical change in the system is being put before voters in Webster, Christian, Lawrence, and Dade counties in April. These four counties will vote on whether to prohibit any property tax increases due to reassessments. Current law requires local governments to roll back tax rates as assessments increase, but we all know that taxes still go up, sometimes substantially.

At the Show-Me Institute, we support low taxes, and I am well-aware of how tempting this will be to voters. But using market valuations in reassessment to set tax levels is a good system. While our property tax system needs reforms, eliminating any and all tax increases from reassessments will make Missouri more dependent on other taxes that hurt our economy far more than property taxes do. Hate them as much as you wish, but property taxes indisputably harm economic growth less than other taxes do.

These property tax limitations would reduce the ability of school districts to fund themselves and would make them more dependent on state aid. Consider the following: school districts in St. Louis County regularly receive at least 80% of their funding from local sources, primarily property taxes, and some are over 90%. It is nowhere near that level in Southwest Missouri. Nixa school district in Christian County is only 54% locally funded, while Marshfield school district in Webster is only 46% locally funded. Even Springfield school district, the largest school district in Greene County, where no property taxes changes are proposed, is only 58% locally funded. These changes would make school districts in these counties more dependent on state aid, not less. Again, I’m aware that many voters may view that as a benefit, but it is anything but.

Numerous other harmful effects would come from diluting the market forces (in the form of assessments based on market values) that form the basis of property taxation. California provides us with an example of the harms of these types of property tax caps with its famous Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which dramatically limited increases in property assessments and taxes. Proposition 13 certainly had its intended effect of lowering property taxes for California homeowners. However, it also reduced mobility, significantly increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities for similar properties receiving similar services. These negative consequences are exactly what these four counties would experience over the long run.

There are also significant constitutional concerns with this legislation. Missouri Constitution Chapter X, Section 3 states that “taxes . . . shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” So, consider the issue of the Logan-Rogersville R-VIII school district. This school district serves families in three counties. If voters approve these tax changes, the property tax system in one of those three counties would remain unchanged (Greene), while in the other two (Webster and Christian) it would be illegal to have a tax increase from reassessment. It would certainly seem unconstitutional for property owners within the same taxing district who own the same type of property (single-family homes) to face different tax and assessment systems for the same services.

We need property tax reform in Missouri, but this total limitation is too severe. If enacted, the property tax proposals before the voters in these four fast-growing counties would make the region’s overall tax system worse, not better. I hope voters will look past the easy appeal of a tax limit to think about the long-term harms.

The post The Wrong Way to Fix Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Business Journal.

Missouri’s property tax system works best when the assessments are accurate, the tax base is wide, and the rates are low. That combination will help grow Missouri’s economy for everyone while properly funding the necessary functions of local government. However, a radical change in the system is being put before voters in St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties in April. These three counties will vote on whether to prohibit any property tax increases due to reassessments. Current law requires local governments to roll back tax rates as assessments increase, but we all know that taxes still go up, sometimes substantially.

This change would also reduce the ability of school districts to fund themselves and would make them more dependent on state aid. Consider the following: Parkway school district in St. Louis County is 89% funded by local taxes. However, Fox school district in Jefferson County is only 51% locally funded, while Wentzville school district in St. Charles is only 64% locally funded, and St. Clair school district in Franklin is just 45% locally funded. These changes would make school districts in these three counties more dependent on state aid, not less. Again, I’m aware that many voters may view that as a benefit, but it is anything but.

At the Show-Me Institute, we support low taxes, and I am well-aware of how tempting this will be to voters. But using market valuations in reassessment to set tax levels is a good system. While our property tax system needs reforms, eliminating any and all tax increases from reassessments will make Missouri more dependent on other taxes that hurt our economy far more than property taxes do. Hate them as much as you wish, but property taxes indisputably harm economic growth less than other taxes do.

Numerous other harmful effects would come from diluting the market forces (in the form of assessments based on market values) that form the basis of property taxation. California provides us with an example of the harms of these types of property tax caps with its famous Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which dramatically limited increases in property assessments and taxes. Proposition 13 certainly had its intended effect of lowering property taxes for California homeowners. However, it also reduced mobility, significantly increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities for similar properties receiving similar services. These negative consequences are exactly what St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties would experience over the long run.

There are also significant constitutional concerns with this legislation. Missouri Constitution Chapter X, Section 3 states that “taxes . . . shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” So, consider the issue of the Meramec Valley R-III school district. This school district serves families in three counties. If voters approve these tax changes, the property tax system in one of those three counties would remain unchanged (St. Louis), while in the other two (Jefferson and Franklin) it would be illegal to have a tax increase from reassessment. It would certainly seem unconstitutional for property owners within the same taxing district who own the same type of property (single-family homes) to face different tax and assessment systems for the same services.

We need property tax reform in Missouri, but this total limitation is too severe. If enacted, the property tax proposals before the voters in these three fast-growing counties would make the region’s overall tax system worse, not better. I hope voters will look past the easy appeal of a tax limit to think about the long-term harms.

The post The Wrong Way to Fix Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sure, enrollment in many of our already small rural districts has declined so much that it raises the question of how the districts can continue to exist. But that’s not the whole story. Some of the “best” districts in St. Louis County have been experiencing steady enrollment declines. In 2017–18, the Clayton School District had almost 2,800 students. Last year, it had fewer than 2,400. A loss of four hundred students in a district of that size is significant. Similarly, Parkway C-2 has lost 1,000 students in the past few years, going from nearly 18,000 students in 2018–19 to fewer than 17,000. Rockwood, which had nearly 23,000 students a decade ago, now has just under 21,000, having lost 1,900 students from its high-water mark.

In fact, every district other than Ladue and Lindbergh has seen enrollment losses since 2010. But their gains of approximately 2,300 students don’t come close to offsetting the countywide loss of over 11,000. St. Louis County’s neighbor, St. Charles County, shows similar trends. The biggest districts are down by thousands of students.

So what does this mean? Even with no boundary changes, we will have excess capacity and too many teachers in most districts unless we make the region and the state more attractive to families. Districts can no longer rest on their laurels and assume their classrooms will be filled. Programs that allow parents to choose a school for each of their children and that allow districts to specialize in what they offer should be welcomed. Those hard district lines meant to keep students out may need to become more porous.

Public education in Missouri is no longer a system of more—more students, more teachers, more school buildings, more money. It’s a shrinking system, and that will bring difficult decisions. It’s time to start thinking about how we can design a smarter system to better serve our region.

The post The System We Have Is Not the System We’ve Had appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

You may ask, “So what? Isn’t this just splitting hairs?”

Undoubtedly, being second to last is hardly better than being dead last. But this correction is not simply about making Missouri teacher salaries look marginally better. It is about calling for clarity when it comes to this important policy discussion.

Right now, the Missouri Legislature is debating measures that could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to increase teacher pay. To date, no lawmaker has been provided accurate information regarding Missouri teacher pay. That’s the problem.

Take, for example, this NEA report in which Missouri ranks 50th. The figures from this report are being described as the average starting “teacher” salary. But the numbers are actually the average starting “district” salary.

“So what?”

But this distinction matters! Each year, Missouri hires thousands of new teachers. An actual calculation of the average starting teacher salary would use the data from each of these teachers. A district that pays well and hires a bunch of teachers would pull the average up.

The NEA report calculates the average starting salary of Missouri’s more than 500 districts. It counts small, low-paying school districts the same as it counts large, higher-paying school districts.

If the Middle Grove School District, which according to the Missouri State Teachers Association is the only district to start teachers at the state minimum of $25,000 and has just 35 students, were to hire one teacher, and the Parkway School District, with more than 17,000 students, were to hire 20 teachers at the starting salary of $44,250, the NEA report would count each district once and say the average starting salary was just $34,625. In reality, the average of those 21 new teachers would be $43,333. This is a difference of more than $8,700.

If you haven’t noticed, Missouri has a lot of school districts Our state has more than 550 school districts, which ranks 11th in terms of total number of districts. Meanwhile, Missouri is 21st in the number of students. Florida, which has about two million more students, has just 75 school districts. All of these figures come directly from NEA reports. Taken together, these facts mean the NEA calculation of district averages leads to lower averages and lower rankings for Missouri teacher pay.

The NEA reports Missouri’s starting salary as $33,234. But what is Missouri’s actual average starting teacher salary?

According to data I have obtained from DESE, the average regular term salary for a first-year teacher in Missouri was $38,367.33 in 2022. This figure was provided directly by DESE after my request. The increase of more than $5,000 would move Missouri up to 37th on the NEA report.

While we’re at it, I’d like to note some other relevant data. Missouri ranks 43rd in average salaries for instructional staff. Meanwhile, Missouri ranks 48th in student-to-teacher ratio, with 11.3 students per teacher. In comparison, Illinois’s ratio is 14.3 to 1, ranking the state 28th. In 2021, revenues for Missouri’s public schools were $15,809 per student, which is 31st overall nationwide. These data suggest that part of the reason Missouri’s teacher salaries are relatively low is due to staffing choices made by school districts themselves.

Missourians deserve an honest discussion about Missouri’s teacher salaries. For that, we must have all the facts.

The post Breaking: The Actual Starting Teacher Salary According to DESE appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In most instances, the timing of the TIF project would not matter. It would start when passed by the TIF commission and city council and last up to 23 years from that date. But apparently, it really matters here, as the special city council session indicates. Why?

Probably because the work on the project has already begun, and if the work has already begun, there is risk of the property being assessed at a higher value in the looming 2023 reassessment cycle. If it is assessed at a higher value, that limits the size of the tax subsidy available. Don’t get me wrong, it would still be an enormous TIF project, but hey, every few million dollars counts.

Of course, the fact that the work has begun before the TIF proposal is finalized is important, because the justification for this abomination of a TIF project is that the area is “blighted” and that the project would not happen at all “but for” the tax subsidy. It is hard to claim that it would not happen “but for” the subsidy when construction has already started before the subsidy is approved, but this appears to mean nothing to Chesterfield, the St. Louis County TIF Commission, and the various planners and lawyers who are all in on the tax subsidy largesse. (See appendix C of this document for the relevant affidavits.)

There’s another way to interpret construction starting on this project before the money was even approved. The developers were so confident that the TIF commission and the Chesterfield City Council would approve the money that there was simply no need to wait. This attitude, if true, would conform with the broader subsidy culture in our state, where local governments often just rubber stamp tax subsidy requests.

Will the city further contort itself to do the bidding of the developer and get this all approved before 2023 when the reassessment clock will strike midnight? Or will the city protect taxpayers and the other affected taxing jurisdictions, such as the Parkway and Rockwood school districts, by dealing with the reality that the developers used the system to extract taxpayer money for a project that never needed subsidies to begin with?

The post What’s the Rush, Chesterfield? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But now it wants to both subsidize and fund a major redevelopment of and around the Chesterfield Mall, and it wants to use property taxes to do so. How do you do that when you don’t have a property tax? Solution: you just take the property taxes from other governments. While that type of stealing would be illegal in many other situations, it is, unfortunately, perfectly legal under the tax-increment financing (TIF) laws of Missouri.

How much tax money is Chesterfield planning to take from other taxing districts should the development be approved and built (no guarantees on either of those)? $300 million. That’s right, $300 million.

The development proposal includes over 3,000 new residential units. Those residential units are going to have families with children. That is obviously wonderful, but what is not wonderful is that the school property taxes from those 3,000 units for the life of the TIF (around 30 years due to the phased in nature of it in this instance) will not go to the school districts (mostly Parkway, some in Rockwood). That tax money will go to Chesterfield and to the developer. The plan includes giving millions of dollars voluntarily to Parkway in an effort to buy the school district’s support, but the school districts have added up the money and concluded it will be short. How far short?

$220 million short. That’s right, $220 million. The school districts have calculated the probable number of extra children who will join the district because of the development, the need for an entirely new school building to educate them, the cost to educate those children on top of the new building, the length of the TIF project, and more, and concluded that they are short $220 million tax dollars in this deal. How are Parkway and Rockwood going to make up that estimated $220 million? They have only a few choices: cut school services in various ways or—more likely, in my opinion—request a tax increase on taxpayers outside of the TIF district.

So let’s be clear: in order for taxpayers to fund the demolition of Chesterfield Mall (instead of having the group that actually owns the mall take care of it) and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of other amenities—including $23 million to pay the cost of lawyers, planners, and financiers—the residents of Parkway school district can almost certainly look forward to a tax increase on everyone who is not inside the TIF district. (To be clear, residents inside the TIF district will also pay the higher tax, it just won’t go to Parkway schools.)

Something is deeply wrong with how we fund local government in Missouri.

The post Chesterfield and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Large TIF appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The six members of the Tax Increment Financing Commission appointed by [St. Louis County Executive Sam] Page joined Parkway School District Chief Financial Officer Patty Bedborough in a 7-5 vote Friday evening against creating a TIF in the low-lying area. 

This is good news for taxpayers for more than just financial reasons. As David Stokes of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance (and formerly of the Show-Me Institute) argued in his testimony before the commission:

As severe flooding has indisputably become more frequent and more dangerous in recent decades, Maryland Heights officials intend to turn thousands of acres of farmland and floodplain into asphalt and concrete. In the next flood, the city will take millions of gallons of water and pump it back into the river to flood someone else. Of course, when they take those thousands of acres that currently can safely hold the water and remove the land from the floodplain, that “someone else” they will flood will be someone whose land previously was not in the floodplain and is not prepared for it.

Too much development in a floodplain does not seem like a good idea for the reasons Stokes outlines above. It therefore is no surprise that developers would not be able to get enough private investment to support the project. Taxpayers should be hesitant to support private endeavors even in the best circumstances. Public dollars should certainly not be used to bail out projects in risky circumstances (pun intended). That the TIF commission rejected this plan is good news.

Listen to our podcast on the topic with David Stokes here: 

https://soundcloud.com/show-me-institute/smi-podcast-stop-building-in-floodplains-david-stokes

The post A Win for Economic Development Sanity appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Roza points out that rewarding teachers in this manner has serious implications for teacher recruitment and retention, fiscal sustainability, and pension obligations. High-quality college graduates with high-paying alternatives may steer clear of education. Similarly, young teachers may be more inclined to leave the profession because of low salaries.

Teachers are primarily paid via a salary schedule, which gives standardized raises to teachers for each additional year of service and each additional postgraduate degree earned. The problem is that a salary schedule often gives teachers a raise that is set as a percentage of what they make, not a predetermined dollar amount. This leads to larger end-of-career increases, because the raises compound over time. For a teacher who starts at $40,000 per year, a 3% raise at the end of the first year will mean a $1200 increase. But their second-year raise will come to 3% of $41,200, which works out to $1,236. Keep projecting the numbers out and each year’s raise just gets bigger and bigger.

In addition, school districts often give cost-of-living (COLA) raises. These too are often awarded on a percentage basis, further widening the pay gap between veteran and novice teachers.

I highlighted this in a post a couple years ago. In which I wrote:

Take, for example, the salary schedule for a teacher with a master’s degree in the Parkway School District. In his or her first 10 years, a teacher in Parkway only receives a 17 percent pay raise. Between their 11th and 20th years, they receive a 51 percent pay raise. The difference is $20,000. It is no wonder we have difficulty retaining new teachers. The system is designed by veteran teachers for veteran teachers. After all, veteran teachers are usually the ones who serve on salary bargaining committees.

Teachers are unique among professionals in this regard. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, Roza calculated the earnings trends for teachers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and computer programmers. Compared to these other professions, teacher pay is significantly back-loaded.

I have written a number of times about the need to revamp how we pay teachers (see here and here). In this report, Roza doesn’t go that far. Rather, she offers a simple solution to slow down the growth in inequity between junior and senior teachers—a fixed-dollar pay raise. Instead of awarding COLA’s on a percentage term, districts should award the same dollar amount to teachers at every step of the pay schedule.

Regardless of your preferred method of reform, Missouri will struggle to attract and retain great young teachers until we stop back-loading teacher salaries.

The post How to Prevent Teacher Pay Inequity from Worsening appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One of the great myths in education today is that all public schools serve all students. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nevertheless, opponents of school choice make frequent use of this falsehood in arguing against any expenditure of public money to help disadvantaged students attend private schools. They argue: “If private schools do not serve every student, they should not get tax dollars.” It is time to set the record straight: individual schools — whether public or private — do not serve all students. Nor should they.

One prime example of a public school that does not serve all students is Metro Academic and Classical High School, a magnet school in the Saint Louis Public School District. U.S. News & World Report ranks Metro as the No. 1 public school in the state, for good reason. Metro grads regularly go on to top-tier universities and perform exceptionally well on achievement tests.

There may be great things going on at Metro, but it cannot be denied that part of the school’s success is derived from its admissions process. To be admitted, a student must score proficient or advanced on the state MAP test. In 2013, nearly 14 percent of black eighth graders in Saint Louis scored proficient or advanced. That means more than 86 percent of black students in the Saint Louis Public School District do not meet the admissions criteria for Metro.

The Saint Louis Public School District has more than 25 magnet schools. Though most do not have admission standards as rigorous as those at Metro, they typically do have some requirements. By design, these admission standards keep students out.

Though they may not have magnet schools or a selective admissions process, other area districts do have special schools designed to serve their most disabled, disturbed, and/or disruptive students.

In 1992, the Parkway School District opened Fern Ridge High School. The school is designed to help “tenth through twelfth grade students, including those with disabilities, succeed when conventional methods have failed.” Students who cannot make it in the general population can be transferred to Fern Ridge. In other words, individual Parkway high schools do not serve all students.

Parkway is not alone in having a special school for students with unique challenges. In 1957, the Special School District (SSD) of Saint Louis County was established. It “was the net result of years of hard work and advocacy by parents of children whose educational needs were not being met by the existing public school system.” Today, the SSD serves approximately 23,000 students through services provided at district-run schools, independent sites, and two technical high schools.

Other students with disabilities attend the Missouri School for the Blind, the School for the Deaf, or use the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program (MoVIP) at home.

The bottom line is that individual schools do not serve all students. That is a good thing. There are great benefits that come from having highly specialized schools that are skilled at educating special students. Bright, gifted students are challenged and receive a tremendous education at Metro High. Students with special needs are encouraged and given the tools to succeed at Fern Ridge. By specializing, these schools are able to provide students with a better education than they might have received in a traditional school.

It is ridiculous to expect individual private schools to serve all students when individual public schools do not fulfill this task. Rather than place unrealistic expectations on private schools, or public schools for that matter, we should work to give every child access to the school that is going to best meet their needs. That may be a traditional district-run school, a magnet school, a special school, a charter school, and yes, even a private school.

Through school choice, every student can be served. As Milton Friedman once wrote, “The injection of competition would do much to promote a healthy variety of schools.” Isn’t that what we really need — a healthy variety of schools that can meet the unique needs of each of our students?

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

The post Public Schools Do Not Serve All Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Take, for example, the salary schedule for a teacher with a master’s degree in the Parkway School District. In his or her first 10 years, a teacher in Parkway only receives a 17 percent pay raise. Between their 11th and 20th years, they receive a 51 percent pay raise. The difference is $20,000. It is no wonder we have difficulty retaining new teachers. The system is designed by veteran teachers for veteran teachers. After all, veteran teachers are usually the ones who serve on salary bargaining committees.

If we are serious about retaining new teachers, why do we design our pay schedules so poorly?

The post Do Schools Really Want To Fix The Teacher Retention Problem? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This means that when school administrators and board members consider layoffs and teacher termination, many of them may have fresh memories of serving as a teacher. Many may also have friends who continue to serve as teachers in the district. As a result, people who consider layoff and termination decisions in Missouri’s school districts may consider the impact on teachers more carefully than the long-term impact on students.

Though Missouri law technically allows for teachers to be terminated on the basis of “incompetency,” we have shown here that districts rarely fire teachers. For example, the Parkway School District, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated just five in the past 10 years. Though state law is part of the problem, school leadership certainly plays a role.

Education expert Rick Hess writes about school administrator’s lack of leadership triggering similar teacher tenure reform efforts in Massachusetts. He writes:

Given the freedom to craft sensible, quality-sensitive evaluations that thoughtfully give some weight to seniority, the state’s school boards and superintendents have . . . punted.

Hess’ observation is likely relevant to Missouri. In our collection of teacher tenure data, we have also requested some districts’ termination policies. Frequently, those policies follow state law, with little added.

So, even though Missouri law states that teachers “shall be retained on the basis of performance-based evaluations and seniority . . .” during layoffs, districts can, in practice, choose to favor teachers who have seniority.

This is why a legislative fix is needed. Missouri House Bill 1526 would require that a teacher’s individual performance be the “most heavily weighted factor” when layoffs are considered. School districts, which receive a tremendous amount of state funding, should not be allowed to make decisions that favor teachers at the expense of students.

The post Lack Of Leadership From Schools Requires State-Level Policy Changes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. In the past 10 years, the Parkway School District in Saint Louis County, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated five teachers. Perhaps all the teachers at Parkway are above average. More likely, poor-performing teachers continue to teach Parkway students.

Teachers can make all the difference in a child’s education. This is precisely why we should reward our best teachers while encouraging teachers with a track record of failure to find another job. The only way to do this is to reform Missouri’s existing teacher tenure law.

The Missouri Legislature is considering a bill that would end teacher tenure and help districts and school boards implement performance-based evaluation systems.

If the bill passes, teachers could be fired for doing a bad job. For most of us, consistently doing bad work means losing our job. Not so for teachers. Current laws state that a tenured teacher can be fired only for egregious conduct, such as willful or persistent violations of the school laws, excessive or unreasonable absences, and felony convictions. Even then, a severely truant (or criminal) teacher receives generous procedural protections. Teacher tenure reform would allow schools to dismiss teachers for unsatisfactory performance.

The reform bill would eliminate “permanent” teachers and indefinite contracts. Most of us operate with at-will employment. Again, not so for teachers. Currently, a teacher who survives a five-year probationary period becomes “permanent personnel” with an indefinite contract. Even if a district reduces staff due to budgetary constraints, school boards must thin the ranks on a last-in-first-out basis. The most senior teachers stay on the job regardless of their teaching ability.

The proposed legislation gives school administrators more discretion to retain the best teachers. Schools could contract directly with teachers for up to four years, but the board would retain the power to terminate a multi-year contract if the teacher scores poorly on evaluations. The last-in-first-out policy would be eliminated and school boards would be required to base staffing decisions on teacher performance.

Teacher tenure reform would ensure that teachers get paid for what they do, not how long they have done it. School districts currently are prohibited from basing salaries on performance-related criteria. Instead, districts pay their teachers based on length of service and level of education. The proposed bill removes this prohibition and requires school boards to consider teacher evaluations when making decisions related to pay, retention, promotion, and dismissal.

Enacting a performance-based scheme would be a big change for Missouri school districts. But the bill addresses implementation as well as substance. It requires districts to create a performance evaluation system, and mandates that certain criteria be considered in teacher evaluations, while allowing school boards and administrators to tailor the system to fit their own needs.

Not surprisingly, teachers’ unions have criticized tenure reform. Missouri National Education Association President Chris Guinther told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “we’ve got to be given the protection that we need to give those kids the quality education that they need.” Teachers do not need protection. They need accountability. A bad teacher can teach bad classes for years. Year after year, students cycle through this teacher’s classroom, only to receive an inadequate education. Wouldn’t these students have a better education if teachers were held accountable?

Teachers do not have a right to their jobs. The Missouri Constitution gives students the right to a public education, and they should have good teachers.

Audrey Spalding is a policy analyst and Ben Barnes is an intern at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Teacher Tenure: Why Should Educators Be Different? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Eric Hanushek, of Stanford University, found that a good teacher can help a student learn one and a half years of material during a single academic year while a bad teacher might only be able to help a student learn half a year’s worth of material. In other words, a good teacher can help a student achieve three times as much educational growth as a bad teacher. A push for teacher tenure reform is not just about holding teachers accountable, it is about creating a way for school districts to get rid of ineffective teachers in order to help students learn more and from better teachers.

It appears that teaching is one of the most secure jobs in the state of Missouri. According to national data, few Missouri teachers are terminated in a given year.

But, I am curious about specific school districts, not just an estimated average across numerous schools. For school districts throughout the state, what number of teachers were terminated during the past 10 years? Are most dismissed teachers new to the profession (and have not yet achieved tenure), with very few being dismissed after achieving tenure? We are still doing research on this issue, but the preliminary data looks like teaching has an extraordinary level of job security.

Consider the following:

• In the past 10 years, the Cape Girardeau School District, which employs approximately 350 teachers, has terminated just two tenured teachers.

• During the same time, the Parkway School District, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated five.

• The Springfield School District, which has more than 1,600 teachers, has terminated fewer than 10 teachers in the past five years.

• The Van Buren School District, in its response to a Sunshine Law request, noted that “no teachers …were asked to leave, were terminated, or were fired by the district” during the past 10 years.

• The Shelby County R-IV School District has not terminated any teachers during the past 10 years.

• The last time the Gilman City R-IV School District terminated any teachers was during the 2002-03 school year. That year, two teachers were terminated.

Perhaps Missouri is inundated with high-quality teachers to the point that, over a 10-year period, some school districts have termination rates of as little as 0.4 percent. But, the case may be that poor teachers continue to teach at school districts that cannot (or will not) terminate them for performance reasons. And this means that some Missouri students will continue to receive a low-quality education.

Instead of keeping on the best and the worst teachers, it is time let school districts encourage the worst teachers to find new jobs, while rewarding the best teachers with pay boosts. Missouri House Bill 1526 is certainly a step in the right direction.

The post Missouri: Where the Women Are Strong, the Men Are Good Looking, And Every Teacher is Above Average? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri students will soon be returning to school, and although most school employees are still enjoying their summer breaks, superintendents are already hard at work preparing their districts for the annual back-to-school onslaught. Superintendents are the most highly compensated employees in education, earning an average salary of $106,368 in Missouri during 2009, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

However, salary statistics considerably understate total superintendent compensation, leaving out benefits such as insurance, car allowances, and annuities. Furthermore, according to a new study by Audrey Spalding, public information specialist at the Show-Me Institute, although superintendent pay is correlated with many school district characteristics — total student enrollment, whether a district is urban or rural, percentage of residents with a college degree, etc. — compensation does not appear to depend on measures of either superintendent performance or student achievement. Given the amount of money paid to superintendents, it behooves Missourians to take a closer look at how superintendent compensation is determined and the benefits that the public receives for that cost.

Using superintendent contracts collected from nearly 90 percent of Missouri’s 521 public school districts (all the collected contracts are available at the Show-Me Institute’s website), Spalding shows that a quarter of all superintendents receive automatic raises built into their contracts. Other school districts look to surrounding districts to determine superintendent pay. For instance, the Lindbergh School District simply averages salary figures from 11 specific school districts and adds 11 percent to determine its superintendent’s pay.

Districts are required to report superintendent salary numbers to DESE, but the value of their contractual benefits are far less transparent. All superintendents receive some form of insurance through their districts, but contracts rarely specify the monetary value of the coverage. More hidden still are the annuities received by 6.9 percent of all Missouri superintendents. The majority of annuity payments are awarded to superintendents already making more than the median salary, which indicates that annuities are a supplement to regular salary, not a replacement for it. Sometimes this additional money can be quite substantial. The Parkway School District’s superintendent, for instance, earns both $200,000 in salary and a $30,000 annuity. Some superintendents say that annuities are used to offset the difference between their salary and what they could earn managing a private firm of similar size. However, the fact that annuity payments are not reported to DESE suggests that they can also serve as a means for districts to mask the full costs of superintendent compensation from the general public.

The simplistic methods used for determining superintendent salary and lack of transparency in compensation are both cause for concern, but more troubling is the fact that superintendent pay does not seem to correlate with student academic achievement. Spalding tested whether higher scores on the mathematics portion of the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test led to increased pay for the superintendents and found no statistically significant relationship between the two variables. Moreover, most school districts do not have any specific method of evaluation spelled out in the contract, and less than 13 percent of districts tied superintendent raises to school board evaluations.

The point is not that school districts are overpaying superintendents. In fact, many — particularly in rural areas — may be underpaid. However, because nearly all superintendents are paid without regard to any kind of performance metric, it is extremely difficult to determine what benefits they bring to the district. If school boards tied at least some portion of superintendent salary to district goals and academic outcomes, and reported total compensation in a more transparent manner, the public would be in a better position to determine whether those resources are being employed wisely. As any good educator will tell you, knowledge is power.

John Payne is a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

Related Links

Actual Pay: A Survey of Missouri Public School Superintendent Salary and Benefit Packages

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This sentence caught my eye:

And even though the school doesn’t have test data to prove its success, the program is growing.

Critics of successful initiatives in education repeatedly make that charge — there’s no “research” or “data” to prove that a program is the best. A great example is the SLPS math teacher who developed an amazing new approach to teaching math, but was told that his work couldn’t be expanded because it wasn’t backed up by research.

Everyone would love to have vast stores of high-quality data on educational practices. But in our less-than perfect world, schools need to make decisions without it. One way to do that is to follow Parkway’s lead, expanding programs that parents want. Giving parents a choice between single-sex and coed classrooms lets people vote with their feet. And it makes it less likely that any child will be assigned to the wrong room. If some children do better in a single-sex environment and others fair poorly, you don’t want them all arbitrarily forced into one of the options.

Since children are different, more research might not even help much. A study that shows the average student improves in a single-sex classroom doesn’t guarantee that individual children will thrive under that policy. And while it’s true any particular program might not succeed if applied generally, working top-down from studies to practice has drawbacks too. A general trend identified in research might not be evident in the local public school.

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