During his State of the State address in January, Governor Mike Kehoe indicated Missouri is opting into the federal government’s new school choice tax credit program. The program resembles Missouri’s MOScholars program. Taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting organization, or SGO, in Missouri. The SGO then distributes scholarships to families in Missouri seeking alternatives to their residentially assigned public schools.

For many families, the scholarships will be used to pay private school tuition. But the potential is broader. At least two public school districts in Missouri already participate in MOScholars, allowing nonresident students to use scholarships to pay transfer tuition; a similar arrangement may be possible under the federal program. Funds could also support homeschooling expenses, tutoring, after-school programs, or enrollment in a microschool (the latter is a fast-growing but loosely defined sector and there is no clear consensus on what defines a microschool). The eligibility criteria are still unsettled.

Non-traditional providers are pushing for few guardrails and minimal regulation, while others argue for stronger oversight and quality controls.

I have mixed feelings. The real value of this program is its potential to expand Missouri’s education marketplace. Competition improves quality in virtually every sector of the economy, and education is no exception. But markets don’t work well when consumers have poor information, so I’d like quality controls and transparency so parents can make informed choices. Here’s the tension: expanding choice and imposing quality controls can work against each other. To illustrate, consider a heavily regulated system in which schools that accept the tax-credit payments must administer standardized tests, publicly report results, and disclose detailed information about their curricula and finances. This level of transparency would reassure policymakers, but the problem is that we cannot force private providers to participate.

And if we make it too difficult (and too costly) to participate, which schools are the most likely to opt out? The answer: the ones that already have plenty of customers without this new program—likely the best schools. And if the best schools opt out, it undermines the value of the education marketplace we’re trying to build in the first place. (This is a complicated problem. See here for a deeper discussion in the context of research that finds negative effects of a voucher program on student achievement in Louisiana.)

I don’t have all the answers, but I hope Missouri lawmakers think carefully about how to strike the right balance, particularly if the federal government gives states meaningful discretion in implementation, which I expect it will. I’d favor a middle-of-the-road approach that requires participating schools to provide straightforward, low-cost information, but without overly burdensome regulations or reporting requirements. I want the best education providers to open their doors to more Missouri students; I don’t want to scare them away.

The post The Dicey Details of the Federal Government’s New School Choice Tax Credit Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is not a new concept for Missourians familiar with our similar state-level program, MOScholars.

How the Program Works

Each taxpayer can direct up to $1,700 of their federal tax liability to an SGO in any state rather than sending it to the IRS. While donor contributions are capped, there is no federal limit on the amount an eligible student may receive, or how many students are funded. SGOs determine funding allocation based on pre-set rules (evenly, tiered by income, etc.).

Participating SGOs must be federally recognized, legitimate nonprofits (not private foundations), and the governor or another state authority must approve the list of eligible SGOs. In Missouri, the State Treasurer’s Office approves organizations for MOScholars, so it may also have this role for the federal program as well.

State Participation

The federal program requires states to opt in to this new program. I expect Missouri will, but we have not declared our intent to participate at this point. The tax credit is slated to become available beginning in 2027.

If Missouri opts out, Missouri SGOs would not be eligible to receive or distribute federal funds. This means no Missouri students could benefit from the program. However, Missouri residents could still claim the federal credit by donating to an SGO in another participating state.

Participating in this program would complement MOScholars and bring even greater choice, flexibility, and opportunity to families around the state.

The post What the New Federal K-12 Tax Credit Program Could Mean for Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Yet these schools and districts rarely face meaningful consequences and there is virtually no threat that they will close, which raises an interesting question: How often should schools close? Frequent closures would clearly be disruptive, but too few could also be a problem. In a healthy education ecosystem, schools that consistently underperform should be replaced with better alternatives. That’s what would happen if the public school system operated like a market.

However, public schools rarely close. And when they do, it’s usually due to declining enrollment or budget cuts, not poor performance. As a result, even schools that fail year after year remain open and funded.

All of this points to a perverse indicator of the effectiveness of expanded school choice: more school closures. This may seem counterintuitive, but if charter and private schools close at higher rates than traditional public schools, it suggests they operate in a system where failure has consequences. That’s a good thing. Replacing inferior providers with stronger providers, through competition, helps make markets more efficient.

Given this background, I enjoyed reading this recent study by Doug Harris and Valentina Martinez-Pabon. It puts hard numbers on school closures nationally. The authors estimate that just 0.9 percent of traditional public schools in the United States closed annually between 2014 and 2018. In contrast, closure rates were 2.9 percent for private schools and 5.1 percent for charter schools—roughly three and six times higher, respectively. The higher closure rates are a sign of a healthier market.

It may feel like a foregone conclusion that failing public schools will always persist, but it doesn’t need to be. Infusing more competition into our education system will push all schools to perform better. And for low-performing schools that cannot figure out how to improve, it will force them to close, making way for new, higher-quality providers. These changes would benefit all children, but especially those who are currently trapped in persistently ineffective schools.

The post How Often Should Schools Close? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The size of Missouri’s kindergarten classes is getting smaller. The birth rate peaked in the state in 2008. Five years later, kindergarten enrollment in the state peaked at nearly 72,000 children. Since then it has steadily declined and total kindergarten enrollment is down by 10,000 students. The chart below illustrates the decline:

Missouri Public Schools Kindergarten Enrollment

It doesn’t take a demographer to see where total enrollment is going. Ultimately, every public school grade will be down by at least 10,000 students—which is a total of 130,000 from peak enrollment in the state.

There will no doubt be handwringing about teacher layoffs, school closings, and consolidation. But anyone who had been paying attention could have planned for this.  We’ve had a decade to adjust our perspective.

The post Public Education in Missouri Is Shrinking appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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David Rosman provided a typical example of this criticism in an editorial for the Columbia Missourian: “Conservative religious leaders and politicians see public education as inferior to private, charter and religious education, but there is no proof supporting that belief.” Rosman then goes on to support his claim by arguing that we do not have an effective way of comparing public and private schools academically, noting that public schools have to accept all students, and pointing out that public school students have won more Scripps National Spelling Bee titles.

It is not clear that Rosman’s examples actually support his claim, but the bigger problem is the claim itself. He says proponents of school choice support the cause because they think public schools are inferior, particularly in the area of academics. Yet academics is just one of the many reasons families support having school choice options.

While I’ve never met a parent who has chosen a charter school or a private school because they believe it will help their child win the Scripps spelling bee, I have met many parents who chose a charter or private school because their children felt bullied in their assigned public school or because they did not feel their children’s needs were being met. I have met parents who have chosen an arts school for their children and some who have chosen a STEM school. And, yes, I have met many parents, from nearly every faith tradition, who have chosen a religious school for their children.

When advocates argue for school choice, it is not because we think all private schools are inherently better than all public schools. Quite the contrary. There are many excellent public schools and many private schools where I would never send my own children. This is not a public versus non-public issue. It is a choice versus no-choice issue. It is a freedom versus control issue.

Proponents of school choice believe parents should be able to direct the upbringing of their children. They also believe that parents should be allowed to choose the type of school that best meets the needs of their children and aligns with the goals of their family.

In short, school choice supporters see assigning students to schools as inferior to a system that allows people to choose from a myriad of educational options.

The post Choice versus No School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The argument is that private school choice programs are inequitable because they do not open options equally for all students. In other words, private schools can deny admission to some applicants.

Take for example the admissions criteria I found online for one school. Students applying to the school must score in the top 30% on standardized tests, have excellent attendance (90%), have good grades, and submit letters of recommendation from teachers, counselors, or other administrators. In addition, the student and his or her guardian may have to pass an interview with the school and write an entrance essay.

Oh wait. Those aren’t the rules for a private school, but for a public school—Metro Academic and Classical School. Metro is a magnet school in the Saint Louis Public School District. Magnet schools are public schools that are allowed to have admissions standards. As St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Blythe Bernhard has reported, Metro is “thriving” and is the “highest-performing high school in the state.”

Many private schools have admissions standards, but most pale in comparison to Metro.

Opponents of private school choice use a lot of arguments to make their case but they fail to consistently apply those arguments to public schools. They say they oppose school choice because some dollars may go to rich families in private schools, but do not oppose publicly funding rich students in rich public schools. And they complain public schools will lose money if a student leaves for a private school but you’ll hear nary a word when a school loses money because a student moves to another public school.

The underlying element in all these school choice criticisms is a philosophy of control. As long as public funding goes to rich kids in public schools, or dollars flow from one public school to another, or admissions criteria are used in a public school system, the critics remain silent.

What then is the real opposition to school choice policies? It seems fair to wonder if what school choice critics fear most is losing control.

The post Do Private Schools “Choose” Their Students? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My post got a bit of attention on X (formerly Twitter),  where many took issue with my claim. For the most part, the objections failed to engage with my argument but instead proved my point. As one person wrote: “My fundamental objection is that you cannot take away funding from public schools. Do what you want with your own non tax related money.” That was my point. School choice opponents do not care about rich people receiving public dollars; they object to allowing people the freedom to control those dollars.

X, for all its good traits, is not the place for a substantive back and forth. Nevertheless, this claim that school choice takes money from public schools deserves some scrutiny. There are two issues to consider. First, it is not necessarily true that a school choice program will take any money from public schools. In a system that funds schools based on a formula, such as Missouri’s foundation formula, public schools will only lose money when a student leaves. This leads me to my second point—schools that lose students should lose money.

Missouri’s schools are funded by a combination of local, state, and federal dollars. If a school choice program funds students already in private schools, as is often claimed by opponents, this would not change funding for the local public schools at all. The school district would continue to receive the funds as determined by the funding formula. The only thing that could possibly be argued is that the additional cost of paying for private school students may lead to constraints on the expansion of funding for public schools in the future, but that is a downstream argument.

The only way school choice takes money away from public schools is when a student switches from a public school to a private school. This could actually lead to an increase in per student revenue for the public school as they lose only the state (and possibly federal) funding for the student but retain local dollars. Setting that aside, it is true that the switch could lead to lower total revenue for the public school. Once again, however, this is not the real objection. Schools always lose money when a student leaves. If the student moves out of state or to another public school, the district will lose money. The district will even lose money if the student leaves to attend a public school that his or her parents pay for. Indeed, the dollar amount lost by the district is no different in any of these scenarios than it would be with a private school choice program (unless the program was designed to take local education dollars).

Opponents of school choice do not argue public schools should not lose dollars when a student leaves. They only object when the student is equipped with public dollars (or tax-deductible contributions to a scholarship fund). The takeaway is clear. Opponents of school choice are fundamentally opposed to freedom of choice in education. They do not believe individuals should be allowed to spend education dollars on the school of their choice.

The post Do Private School Choice Programs “Take Money Away” from Public Schools? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the United States, school choice can mean many things. It could involve public schools in open enrollment, or public charter schools, and, increasingly, it can mean choosing a private school via a scholarship tax credit, a voucher, or an education savings account program. I was contrasting choice versus a residential assignment system that does not allow for choice. Residential assignment is what most Americans have in their local public school system. My English colleague didn’t comprehend this. They have choice within their public education system, so he thought I was arguing for a private pay system where individuals must pay for their children’s education.

Once I discovered the misunderstanding, I clarified what I was talking about. He said, “You mean students are just assigned to attend a school based on where they live and don’t have any choice?” When I said “Yes,” he replied, “Well, that’s just a terrible system.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The post Residential Assignment, No School Choice: A Terrible System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The foundation formula—which is used to equalize public education dollars between property-rich and property-poor school districts—is based on the highest student attendance number in any of the last four years. It has always been the case that Missouri districts can pick the highest of any of the last three years to use as their average daily attendance (ADA), but the law was adjusted during COVID to allow districts to use any of the last four.

Here’s what puzzles me—this is still happening. According to instructions from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), in FY 2022 student attendance was “broadly impacted” by the Delta and Omicron variants and therefore, for FY 2024, districts can still use the highest attendance of the four previous years. Isn’t it time to stop leaning on COVID?

But here’s what this means in reality. Let’s take the district Fort Zumwalt district as an example. In 2021, it received an average of about $3,000 in foundation formula money per student. Even though its ADA in 2022 was 15,971, Fort Zumwalt gets to use its 2019 ADA of 16,856 for four years, giving it almost 900 ghost students to use in the formula. Moreover, its ADA has steadily declined from over 17,200 students in 2015 to just under 16,000 in 2022—this decline started before the pandemic. Statewide, using the maximum ADA for the past four years for all school districts results in a total of 65,500 ghost kids. Using the foundation formula’s per-student State Adequacy Target amount (the minimum amount the state says each student should receive in state funding) of $6,375 results in over $415 million in funding for students who used to be in attendance.

We know that kids have been on the move since the pandemic. Homeschool numbers have skyrocketed. Private schools have enrolled public school switchers. Some students may have decided that virtual schooling worked well for them, and some parents have gotten together to start their own schools. Public funding for education can easily keep up. We should be funding students where they are, not where they used to be.

The post Missouri’s Ghost Students appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A few months ago, the Archdiocese of St. Louis announced the closing of two high schools in the fall, citing a lack of funds to remain open. Being very fond of the education these schools provide, students, parents, and alumni rallied together to save their schools and were able to secure the funding needed to remain open, independent of the archdiocese.

The closing of a school is almost always heartbreaking news that nobody wants to hear. However, I do believe that school closures shed light on an important principle that is (in some cases) being enforced: students deserve to go to high-quality schools, and only those schools that offer the best value and fulfill their students’ needs will survive.

Through market forces, this happens organically at a private school—parents will not pay to send their kids to a school that isn’t meeting their academic or social needs. If enrollment declines sufficiently, the school will eventually see no other option but to close. Charter schools also face closures, as schools that aren’t performing well will likely experience declining enrollment and will not continue to receive funding from the state. Because of the possibility of closure, private and charter schools have an incentive to improve academically and fulfill the needs of students.

Traditional public schools, on the other hand, have very little incentive to improve academically. Unless the situation becomes truly dire, public schools continue to receive funding despite their failures, and many students are left behind in the process.

Show-Me Institute analysts recently developed a piece of model legislation that would help address the incentive problem for public schools by allowing parents to send their kids to any public school in the state. Creating a true marketplace in education is one of the best ways to ensure our schools improve and kids in Missouri get the best education possible.

The post School Closings Shed Light on an Important Principle appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We rarely use this sort of entrepreneurial thinking in education. For one, the vast majority of students—roughly 90%—attend a public school. Charter public schools are growing in this sector, but traditional public schools still enroll, by far, the most students of any school type. Of the roughly 10% of students who attend private schools, most attend some sort of religious school. Catholics have historically served the lion’s share of private school students.

With public and church-sponsored schools dominating the landscape, there has never been much room for entrepreneurs. Even if someone had a great idea, they would struggle to compete with free public schools or church-supported private schools.

That is beginning to change.

In places such as Florida, where school choice programs allow students to attend private or micro schools with publicly supported scholarships, we are seeing the start of something interesting—teachers becoming entrepreneurs.

I recently had the pleasure to serve as an advisor on a report conducted by Step Up for Students. Step Up for Students is “a state-approved nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer four scholarships for Florida schoolchildren.”

Step Up conducted focus groups with former public school educators who left the public school system to start their own schools. These teachers thought they had a great idea to serve students and, thanks to the scholarship program, families had the means to pay tuition at the schools.

Check out the terrific slide deck or the video below to learn more about these teachers turned entrepreneurs.

The post Turning Teachers into Entrepreneurs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Similarly to the Trinity Lutheran Church case in Missouri and the Espinoza case in Montana, the court held that allowing students to take their public dollars to a religious school of their choice does not establish an official state religion any more than using a Pell grant at a religious university does. The ruling does not require states to fund school choice. But, if they have a school choice program, they may not exclude religious schools from participating.

Beginning this fall, qualified Missouri families can apply for an Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) to be used to pay for, among other things, tuition at a private school. Five of the six approved Education Assistance Organizations (EAOs) that will be disbursing the scholarships are religious. The latest Supreme Court ruling should put to bed any questions as to whether anyone should take issue with that.

The post A SCOTUS Victory for Private School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Discovery School has an amazing story. When the coronavirus struck in March of 2020, the Discovery Center, a children’s science museum, worked around the clock to transform into a licensed childcare center to continue students’ education even if their schools were closed to in-person instruction. Every member of the team agreed to work in person instead of working from home. By August, it had cultivated a community of learners who wanted to keep the good times going. The Discovery Center leased and renovated a building that used to be part of Everest College and created a space for children to do their virtual learning in small learning pods. By January of 2021, it was ready to launch a standalone school. It currently operates as a private school for students in Springfield. The STOP award created an informative webpage on the school, and it is worth checking out.

Simply by being named a finalist, the school is guaranteed at least $250,000 in prize money. The full prize will be announced December 14th at Forbes’ annual 30 under 30 event.

The post Innovative Springfield School Up for $1 Million Prize appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Once again, many, many parents are completely fed up with district leadership. In addition, teacher union leadership is whipsawing in what it does and doesn’t support for teacher safety. Most schools figured out how to safely provide in-person instruction by the end of the last school year. Now it seems like they’re scrambling for solutions. Last year districts were forced to create functional virtual education programming. This year they risk losing state funding if they bring it back.

Parents have been loudly expressing their frustration for at least a year and a half with having just one option for their children. Yet districts still think they can issue edicts (must mask/mask optional) that apply to each and every kid and expect that parents will just get in line? Those days, in my opinion, are over. Parents are suing. Parents are protesting. Parents are packing school board meetings.

One thing is clear: It is not only possible but also necessary to have a varied portfolio of schools from which parents can choose. It’s time to give parents access to public education funding to find a good solution for their families. That may be an education hub (or pod) at the YMCA. That may be a private school. That may be a neighboring school district with different policies. That may be homeschooling.

Florida is expanding its Hope Scholarship program to families who don’t want to send their children to schools that have mask mandates. At the end of August, Missouri will have a scholarship program for students with disabilities and low-income students. That program could be ramped up and publicly funded. Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has received nearly $3.5 billion in federal stimulus funding. It’s time for real leadership.

The post It’s Back to . . . Wait, What? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Download Infographic Here

How ESAs would be funded

• ESAs are not paid for through the state budget – Under the proposed ESA legislation, individuals and businesses would make a donation to a scholarship granting organization and in return receive a tax credit. Those donations would then be used to grant scholarships to qualifying students who could use the funds to enroll in another school district, a charter school, a private school, or cover the costs of homeschooling.
• ESAs do not directly impact the funding formula – As a result of this funding structure, ESAs may result in decreases in the general revenue through tax collections, but they will not directly impact the foundation formula funding for public schools in Missouri.
• Tax credits go to donors, not scholarship recipients – There is no connection between the individual or businesses making donations and those receiving scholarships. For example, making a donation does not guarantee access to a scholarship for your child and conversely, families do not receive any tax credit for paying for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses.
• There are no federal funds being redirected to support proposed ESA legislation – ESAs would be funded solely through donations that would be encouraged/rewarded through tax credits. No direct funding, either from the state foundation formula or from federal education funding is involved.
• Learn more here

ESAs actually increase funding for public schools

• Two amendments to HB349 would actually increase funding for public schools in Missouri if Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are finally passed.
  • The first amendment ties the operation of the ESA program to increasing state reimbursement for school transportation costs to at least a 40% level. In recent years the state has only reimbursed district schools for 10%-15% of their transportation costs, so this would be a major increase in funding, especially for rural schools. The same provision has been added to SB55.
  • The second amendment creates a “hold-harmless” condition that guarantees that any district that has students leaving their schools as a result of receiving an ESA scholarship will still receive state funding for that student for five years. This means that over a five-year period district schools could receive $31,875 in state funding for every student who receives an ESA even though they no longer have to pay for that child’s education.
  • See the final text of HB349 passed by the House: https://house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills211/hlrbillspdf/0711H.03P.pdf

ESAs are not vouchers and not the same as 529 plans

• Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are very different from vouchers used in other states:
  • Vouchers involve state funding being directly paid to private schools through a voucher distributed to families sending their children to those schools. Under the proposed ESA legislation, funds would be distributed directly to families who could then choose to use those funds in a variety of ways. As highlighted above, the funds sent to families would come from a non-profit scholarship granting organizations funded through donations NOT from the state budget.
  • Vouchers limit families to spending funds for private school tuition. The proposed ESA program would allow families to use funds for a wide variety of educational costs including costs for homeschooling, testing costs, tutoring needs, therapies for students with special needs, transportation to school, tuition at public charter and district schools outside of their home district and private school tuition. As a result, ESAs give families many more options to find an educational environment that meets their children’s specific needs.
• ESAs are not the same as 529 plans
  • Under current federal law, families can open a 529 savings account for their children, use funds in that account to pay for private K-12 tuition and receive the same tax benefits (about $500 in savings a year) as they would if they used the 529 account to pay for college tuition. While this is a benefit to families who can already afford private school tuition, it does not make accessing a private school a possibility for low-income families in the same way that an ESA would. The Show Me A Brighter Future Scholarship program that has been proposed would be funded the same way as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, but instead of disbursing funds to families through a scholarship granting organization, the state treasurer would set up a 529 account for families receiving a scholarship and they would then use that account to pay tuition.
  • Learn more here

The post How Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) Work appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Families need options, now more than ever.

It seems perpetually lost in the debate that different people are experiencing the pandemic differently. There are families who need to take serious precautions. They or their child might have an underlying health issue that would make contracting the coronavirus dangerous. They may have frequent contact with elderly friends or family who might be at risk of complications should they catch COVID-19. Allowing them to use virtual education for the duration of the pandemic is the appropriate and fair thing to do.

Other families, however, are making a different calculation. They are looking at research that, at least to this point, shows little risk to children, particularly young children, and are weighing this very small risk against the serious risk of learning loss from a semester or year of low-quality online instruction. The parents might be young and healthy, with little contact with vulnerable people, and believe that they can use in person education safely and appropriately.

I wouldn’t tell either of these families that their decision is wrong, because each has to weigh the risks and benefits that apply to their particular circumstances. But we must always remember to look at both sides of the ledger: the coronavirus absolutely poses risks, but so does a year of lost schooling.

Our education system needs to support families, whatever decision they make. This means having both online and in-person options available to them. We need to support schools that want to open for in-person instruction and make sure that they have the capability to operate safely. If traditional public schools are choosing to delay opening or are opening solely as online schools, we need to support families that want to do something else.

The post More Education Options, Please appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For those who aren’t aware, PPP was created by Congress to give forgivable loans to businesses and nonprofits affected by the coronavirus. As governments across the country shut down schools and businesses, Congress realized that it needed to provide support or businesses would go under, costing millions of jobs and carving deep scars into the American economy.

The first part of the story is important. Government shut these businesses and schools down. PPP was not a “bailout,” rewarding businesses that had acted poorly or were floundering. Businesses and schools had little say in whether or not they would be able to serve customers and did not deserve to be harmed as a result.

Lots of schools took PPP loans. This shouldn’t surprise us. As Dean Johnson, leader of the Crossroad Academies charter schools in Kansas City told The Kansas City Star, “I understand the economic realities, but one way or another we need to be able to meet our expenses, and if we’re trying to provide a more complex learning model what we certainly can’t be doing is laying off staff.”

But here is where the Star’s PPP story went off the rails. Rather than examining the effects of the coronavirus on local schools and their budgets, the author decided to pit charter and private schools against the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), making the case that it was unfair that charter and private schools could get PPP support while KCPS couldn’t. The article PPP-shamed them. It includes the predictable jabs at Rockhurst High School’s tuition ($15,000 for the upcoming year), and a quote from the local teachers union leader taking a dig at Betsy DeVos.

Like great Kansas City jazz, it’s the notes that it didn’t play that are the most revealing.

First, it left out the fact that KCPS receives more public funding than local charter schools, and even more per pupil than most private schools. According to the state of Missouri, KCPS spent $15,137 per student in 2019. Seems like an important detail to put in the story. KCPS is hardly in penury. It is certainly not “underfunded.”

Second, as Mayor Quinton Lucas pointed out on Twitter, in Clay County, federal CARES Act dollars were allocated to support the North Kansas City and Liberty public school districts. Jackson county could do the same for KCPS but hasn’t. Maybe someone should ask them why not.

Third, the article fails to mention that if private and charter schools were to close due to the economic effects of the coronavirus (as more than 100 private schools already have), it would be terrible for KCPS. State and local governments are already reeling from decreased tax revenue due to depressed economic activity; flooding schools with hundreds or thousands of new students would put tremendous strain on KCPS or any other public school district. If public school advocates could see beyond their immediate, narrow interests they would understand that charter schools and private schools are doing them a favor.

The disappointing thing about the Star’s article is that if it were not framed as adversarial, but as a system of schools wrestling with a shared problem, we might be better able to find solutions. Judging from the social media reaction, most readers walked away from the story angry at private and charter schools, not interested in how to help all children in Kansas City get a good education in the time of the coronavirus. That’s a shame.

The post The Star PPP-Shames Kansas City Private and Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That’s because parents want different things. Some are ready to send their kids back to school right now, and may really want or need a full-time in-person schedule instead of an alternating schedule. Clearly some parents want only virtual education—but for differing amounts of time. One in ten parents wants to wait out the whole year. The graph below, from a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute, reflects how parents are thinking differently about school reopening:

Hopefully, policymakers and education leaders in Missouri are hard at work trying to figure this out. One obvious move is to ensure that parents can easily enroll their children in the existing, approved virtual programs through the Missouri Course Access Program (MOCAP). Requiring district permission to do so is ridiculous at this point.

A second immediate need is to let parents seek out and purchase the education that they’re comfortable with this fall. A Learn Safely Scholarship would give parents funds to spend on education resources, like private school tuition, as they see fit. Putting funds directly in the hands of parents would help fill the void in what districts are providing.

Parents have become front-line workers in public education, and many are exhausted and anxious from the experience. The time to figure out how to educate every Missouri student is now, not after we see the reopening fallout.

The post What Do Parents Want This Fall? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The ruling finally puts to rest whether states can discriminate against religious schools in state-funded scholarship programs. Until now, states have relied upon constitutional amendments—born from an idea conceived by Congressman James Blaine nearly 150 years ago—to prevent any public money from going to religious schools. These so-called “Blaine Amendments” were primarily about discriminating against Catholic schools at a time when the Protestant majority was concerned about Catholic immigration. But no more.

And if you don’t think parents want to be able to find the school that’s best for their children, then you haven’t met Kathy Espinoza. Her years-long fight for her children went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Now it’s settled. But just because the legal question is settled doesn’t mean there isn’t still much work to be done. States still need to act, and lawmakers should recognize that parents want and deserve school choice, regardless of school type.

It’s likely that there will be a lot of unhappy parents this fall as districts begin to release their reopening plans. Missouri has over 25,000 available private school seats; some are in religious schools, and some are in secular schools. This ruling means the Missouri Legislature could let parents access these seats by creating scholarship programs that would allow families to choose the best education for them. As of today, lawmakers are out of excuses.

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