The federal government will roll out a new tax-credit program in 2027 to expand school choice. Taxpayers will be able to receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations of up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting organization (SGO) in Missouri—or any other participating state. The SGO then distributes scholarships to families seeking alternatives to their residentially assigned public schools.

In a previous post I wrote about the new program, focusing on the challenge of deciding which educational expenses should qualify for scholarship funding.

Over at Education Next, Rick Hess has a thoughtful piece on other aspects of the program. As both a school choice advocate and an advocate of fiscal responsibility, he opens with a concession, acknowledging the potential loss of tax revenue the program could create at a time when the federal debt is growing rapidly.

He then makes what I think is the right point: While it is unfortunate that the federal budget is off the rails, it is hard to get too worked up about this program when (a) it is a drop in the bucket compared to our broader fiscal problems, and (b) so much of our debt-financed spending benefits older Americans. If we’re going to keep borrowing, why not direct at least a small share toward expanding opportunities for children?

I share Hess’s bottom-line sentiment. I wish the federal government managed its finances more responsibly. But since that does not appear likely anytime soon, investing a bit more in the children who will ultimately inherit—and help repay—that debt seems sensible to me.

Turning to the program itself, Hess raises an important practical concern. Even though this is a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, which means it is effectively costless for taxpayers to participate, we should not assume it will be widely used. Many taxpayers may be unaware the credit exists. Others may doubt they’ll actually receive it or may not know how to make a qualifying donation to an SGO. Even modest uncertainty or inconvenience can discourage participation.

These are legitimate concerns. The new scholarship tax credit has the potential to generate substantial resources to expand school choice, but realizing that potential is not automatic. As Hess puts it, “I don’t put a lot of stock in the casual assurance that taxpayers will jump through hoops to give money away simply because, as one very prominent champion explained to me, ‘It’s a good thing to do.’”

Hess’s piece points to one of the program’s biggest implementation challenges. Helping taxpayers understand the credit—and making participation as simple as possible—could make an enormous difference. Show-Me Institute analysts will certainly be doing our part, and I hope many others will as well.

The post How Much Will the New Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Boost School Choice Funding? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The anti-school choice position is usually framed as a defense of public education. But at its core, what it really does is defend a particular way of assigning students to schools: where you live determines where your children go to school.

The strongest opponents of school choice oppose vouchers, charter schools, and interdistrict open enrollment. In effect, they argue it is best if families have only one option: the public school assigned to them by their residential address.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores a simple fact: many families already exercise school choice by choosing where to live. Parents routinely pay higher housing costs or relocate to neighborhoods with schools they prefer. When a school develops a poor reputation, a nearby charter school is not required to siphon off enrollment—families with the means to move often do exactly that.

School choice is alive and well in the U.S. education system; it simply operates through the housing market.

The real question, then, is not whether school choice should exist—it’s which families get to participate. Families with financial resources already buy access to different schools through the housing market. Families without resources are frozen out.

Policies such as charter schools, vouchers, and open enrollment do not create school choice. They expand school choice opportunities to families who cannot participate via the housing market. Seen this way, the anti-school choice position becomes much harder to defend. Opponents are not preserving a world without school choice—they are preserving a world in which meaningful school choice is available to some families, while remaining out of reach for others.

I’m not anti-public school. On the contrary, I want high-quality public schools to thrive. But I do not believe traditional public schools should be protected from competition by denying lower-income families the choices that wealthier families already enjoy.

The post The Faulty Logic of the Anti-School Choice Position appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

At the Show-Me Institute, we spend a lot of time analyzing the systemic, high-level benefits of educational freedom—how it spurs competition, how it affects state funding formulas, and how it drives long-term accountability. But sometimes, it is important to look past the research and focus on the immediate, practical reality confronting parents.

Why do families need school choice? The answer is straightforward—a single, zip-code-assigned school cannot possibly be everything to every child. And when a school fails a student, that student needs a lifeline. A recent iteration of EdChoice’s long-running Public Opinion Tracker survey shows that roughly one in four parents indicate that they have had to switch their children’s school at some point.

When you dig into why these families are switching, the reasons are straightforward. Parents pull their children out of schools because of unfortunate, everyday problems that directly impact a child’s well-being and future.

The four most common reasons parents choose to leave a school are:

• Academic needs not being met: The child is either falling behind without support or completely unchallenged by a rigid, one-size-fits-all curriculum.
• Bullying: The learning environment has become unsafe, hostile, or emotionally damaging.
• Difficulty with teachers: Friction or a lack of connection with educators that derails the learning process.
• Excessive stress or anxiety: The school environment actively harms the child’s mental and emotional health.

As a parent of three children who had no publicly funded choice, I have witnessed or experienced all of these. Missouri families who face these issues have very few options. If you have the financial means, you can pay private school tuition out of pocket or pack up and move to a different neighborhood. But if you are a lower-income or working-class family in Missouri, you are trapped unless you live near a charter school in St. Louis, Kansas City, or maybe one day Boone County (charter schools are now authorized to open there, but none have yet). Many families have to watch their children suffer through chronic anxiety, falling grades, or safety concerns because an arbitrary residential boundary says there is no other choice.

This is precisely why educational choice is so vital. It isn’t about dismantling public education. All parents need some form of agency when their children’s current school simply isn’t working. When a child is facing bullying or their academic needs are being completely ignored, a family cannot afford to wait five or ten years for the school to change. They need an option right now.

The national data show that school switching is a normal, healthy mechanism for families trying to optimize their children’s upbringing. It’s time to ensure that every single family in Missouri, regardless of income, has the flexibility to make that switch when their children’s future depends on it.

The post This Is Why Missouri Families Need Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Evidence highlighted by Show-Me Institute researchers shows that charter schools are disproportionately represented among “Bright Spot” schools nationwide; that is, schools where students consistently exceed expectations academically. And Missouri charter schools are doing even better—ours are among the most effective in the country in terms of improving academic achievement relative to their traditional public-school alternatives.

The introduction of a charter school does not replace existing public schools; instead, it adds another option for parents and students to address their diverse needs. The move signals broader momentum for school choice across Missouri. It represents an important step toward a much more diverse and adaptable educational system, one designed to give every student access to high-quality instruction and the opportunity to succeed.

The post Columbia’s First Charter School Approved for 2027 Opening appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The University of Missouri (MU) recently hosted a lecture by Robert Henderson, who coined the term “luxury beliefs.” These are beliefs that signal status among the affluent while imposing little cost on them, but that burden the poor and marginalized. A common example is the idea of defunding the police: it’s easy to endorse from a safe, well-resourced neighborhood, where the consequences are less likely to be felt personally.

Once you understand the concept of luxury beliefs, you see them everywhere.

After Henderson’s visit I found myself thinking about school choice, and specifically the debate over charter schools in Columbia. Charter schools are public schools that operate independently of traditional school districts. They have more flexibility in how they educate students, but they’re also held accountable for results. Unlike traditional public schools, they can be closed if they fail to perform or attract students. The data on charter school outcomes in Missouri are unambiguous: Charter schools consistently outperform traditional public schools.

A recent state law change allows charter schools to open in Columbia, but there is vocal opposition locally. This is despite the fact that many district schools perform poorly. Moreover, the first approved charter is operated by one of the most successful Charter Management Organizations in the entire state, Frontier Schools. In the PRiME Center’s 3-Year Growth Report, Frontier has two schools in the top five statewide in terms of promoting academic growth.

Columbia Public Schools has opposed Frontier’s entry (luckily to no avail thus far). Several current and prospective school board members are also opposed, and community forums are full of what I suspect is an angry minority of citizens who don’t want Frontier to open a school in Columbia.

The opposition screams of luxury beliefs.

I wonder how many of the opposing voices send their kids to Battle High School, where of all the students who take Algebra-I, just 7 percent—this is not a typo, 7 percent!—score proficient or higher on the state’s Algebra-1 End of Course Exam. Or how many send their children to Derby Ridge Elementary School, where fewer than 5 percent of 5th graders—again, not a typo—score proficient or higher in mathematics.

How many of those in opposition send their children to any of Columbia’s low-performing schools?

I bet very few, if any.

For families with means, school choice already exists—they can buy homes in neighborhoods with higher-performing schools. Opposing charter schools costs them little. But for families without that option, the stakes are much higher.

What are those families supposed to do?

Why not allow a proven operator like Frontier to offer another path? If you were a family without means, wouldn’t you want that option?

If you’re fortunate enough to send your children to a school you like in Columbia Public Schools, I’m happy for you, genuinely. But don’t stomp on other people’s opportunities with your luxury beliefs.

The post School Choice and Luxury Beliefs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These are all relevant questions, and at the Show-Me Institute, we’ve created a resource to answer such questions: MOSchoolRankings.org

As an example of what these data can be used for, Figure 1 shows how Missouri school districts are distributed across different levels of spending per student. It should be noted that these statistics include non-current spending items like interest and capital outlay (such as constructing a new gym, renovations, etc.).

For reference, in the 2023–24 school year, the average expenditure per student was around $19,500. Of that, about $15,900 were current expenditures and $3,600 were non-current expenditures.

Figure 1: Number of School Districts and Charter Schools Grouped By Average Expenditures Per Student, 2024–25

Source: MOSchoolRankings.org

Most Missouri school districts and charter schools spent between $13,000 and $22,000 per student in the 2024–25 school year, but there are numerous outliers in the data, as shown below.

Table 1: Public School Districts and Charter Schools with the Highest and Lowest Average Expenditures Per Student, 2024–25

Source: MOSchoolRankings.org

In Table 1, many of the highest-spending school districts in Missouri are rural, including several extremely small districts, such as Missouri City 56, which enrolls just 14 students. By contrast, many of the lowest-spending districts are also rural, though they tend to be larger and vary more in size.

Missouri’s mean total expenditure per student (weighting each district equally and including non-current expenditures) is $20,406, while the median is $18,934. Even so, there is a surprisingly wide spending range across the state, from roughly $12,000 per student to more than $60,000 per student.

These kinds of statistics are important when evaluating potential changes to the funding formula. To take one small example, Spickard R-II saw enrollment decline from 54 students in 2005–06 to 21 students in 2024–25: a 61% decrease. For state funding, Missouri’s hold-harmless policy guarantees that Spickard R-II receives no less than the state funding it received in 2005–06, even though the district has far fewer students. This likely contributes to why Spickard spent $41,224 per student in 2024–25.

Clear, accessible data are important. And of course, spending is only one aspect of this. MOSchoolRankings.org allows users to go further by comparing districts on academic performance, student demographics, growth, and much more.

The post Which School Districts Spent the Most Per Student? Which Spent the Least? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Missouri House of Representatives recently passed House Bill (HB) 2230, a bill focused on limiting screen time for students in public schools. This legislation is not about cell phones, which already cannot be used in Missouri public schools. This is about screens used for instruction.

The legislation is a scaled-back version of an earlier proposal that would have imposed a firm 45-minute cap on student screen use and mandated cursive instruction. Instead, the bill—passed by a vote of 143 to 10—requires individual schools to develop their own screen-time policies. It also requires schools to share information about student technology use with parents upon request.

The bill additionally establishes the Framework on Classroom Use of Screens Council, or “Focus Council,” which will be responsible for reviewing best practices for screen use and providing policy guidance, ensuring that sustainable monitoring systems of classroom screen use are present.

Currently, there is no statewide guidance or requirement addressing screen time in public schools. By establishing a baseline framework, the bill represents a step toward balancing technology use in Missouri classrooms.

Parents are increasingly raising concerns about the adverse effects of screens on student learning. For example, parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District are pushing for reduced screen time for instruction, consistent with the intent of HB 2230. Some teachers seem concerned, too: Chalkbeat recently covered a teacher who has taken screens out of his classroom entirely. He reports that his reduced reliance on technology has resulted in improved relationships with his students and better student effort and performance.

There is growing interest in unwinding the reliance on technology in our classrooms that accelerated with the onset of the pandemic. This may prove beneficial for students, parents, and teachers alike. While technology can still be an effective tool in education, there are downsides to being too reliant on screens. HB 2230 is a step in the right direction.

The post Missouri Takes a First Step on Classroom Screen Time appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post Bloated Bureaucracy and Failing Kids The Case for School Choice with Christopher Talgo appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I was reading a recent post by Chad Aldeman at Aldeman on Education that touched on something I’ve been thinking about a lot: the rise of disorder in our schools.

I’ve heard anecdotes for a while, but I first saw it clearly in data while working on a project about teacher working conditions. Since the pandemic, teachers report substantial declines in their working conditions along many dimensions. Most notably, they report a sharp increase in classroom disruptions. We are losing control of the learning environment, and that’s a serious mistake.

Aldeman was thinking about the same thing in his recent post, where he opines on a different post by Noah Smith about the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in California. Bear with me for just a moment while I make the connection from Smith’s post on BART to education.

Smith describes how BART installed fare gates, after which crime and maintenance costs dropped sharply. As it turns out, a small number of riders were responsible for most of the disorder and they weren’t paying fares. Once the gates went up, order was restored. Smith’s conclusion is simple and persuasive: “You only have to restrain a very small number of people in order to maintain public order.”

He continues:

Progressives often argue against measures like fare gates, labeling them “carceral” and “racist”. This demonstrates a principle that I call anarchyfare — the idea that eliminating society’s rules serves as a kind of welfare benefit for marginalized people. But in fact, most poor and marginalized people are just peace-loving people . . . [and] they are the chief victims of the tiny number of chaotic individuals who destroy the commons and make public spaces and public services unusable.

I fear this is what is happening in our schools.

I worry most about students who attend disadvantaged and low-performing schools, where data show that behavioral problems are more prevalent. Some educators—maybe mostly administrators—seem to believe that tolerating disruptive behavior is compassionate. But I think they’re wrong. It does not prepare the misbehaving student to be a functional adult in a civil society, and more importantly, it disrupts learning for the majority of students who are not disruptive, robbing them of the opportunities afforded by a strong education.

If we care about equity and opportunity, we must restore order through stronger, consistently enforced disciplinary policies in our public schools.

The post Anarchyfare in Our Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

QNS, a local news outlet covering Queens, New York, released an interesting article about a local high school under investigation by New York City Public Schools. Teachers at the school claim they are forced to pass failing students. Such blatant grade-inflation policies are uncommon, but I suspect softer versions of the policy are rampant in our public schools nationwide, including here in Missouri.

The quotes in the article speak for themselves, so I’ll just copy and paste them here without commentary:

“Students regularly fail tests and other assignments, teachers [said], but still receive passing grades.”

“‘Students have mentioned that it’s not fair that they’re trying and then they see classmates show up half the time and have nearly an equivalent grade,’ the teacher said. ‘They get frustrated, which will then demotivate them from doing work because they think it’s an unfair policy.’”

“Last year’s mastery grading policy stated . . . that any grades a student receives that are not 100 would not be included in their [final] grade.”

“While teachers maintain the ability to draft their own syllabi, they said that many teachers have been forced to adjust their expectations over time due to the current school administration. ‘I was guided in trying to avoid failing students,’ [one] teacher said.”

“The teacher . . . said that if they did not reach a certain percentage of students passing the class—80%—they would be called into a meeting with the administration to discuss how they could improve the grades of students.”

“One teacher said out of around 100 students, they haven’t seen over 20 of them all school year. If they must pass 80% of the students, that means anyone who shows up to class must pass in order to achieve that goal, regardless of whether the students do any work.”

—————–

I know I just copied and pasted this whole assignment. It seems lazy, but in my defense, this is A-level effort in many of our schools.

The post More Evidence on Grade Inflation in Our Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Steubenville must be rich, right? Nope. The poverty rate in Steubenville is among the highest in the state, which makes its literacy rate all the more impressive.

Steubenville then must have access to more funding than other districts? Wrong again. Steubenville’s per-pupil spending is below average in Ohio, and below the average in Missouri.

So how does Steubenville do it? It’s hard to be sure, but Aldeman’s article suggests an intuitive explanation: the district emphasizes literacy skills through and through. He gives several examples. Steubenville offers subsidized preschool where teachers emphasize speaking in complete sentences as language practice for later, when kids begin learning how to read. Every elementary teacher, even the physical education teacher, leads a reading class. And Steubenville kids practice reading constantly, either as part of the whole class or in small groups, and they work on their fluency skills by reading aloud to each other.

I’m not sure which aspects of Steubenville’s approach are most important, but what stands out to me is the district’s clear commitment to the purpose of teaching literacy. And sure enough, the results follow. This stands in stark contrast to what is happening in many schools today, where mission creep has led to a proliferation of objectives, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) de-emphasizing the core competencies our schools have historically emphasized, such as literacy, numeracy, science, and civics.

So, cheers to Steubenville. I hope districts elsewhere—including in Missouri—recognize its success and work to emulate Steubenville’s approach.

The post The Amazing Case of Steubenville, Ohio appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For years, the Show-Me Institute has scrutinized the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) —not out of malice, but out of a desperate desire to see our students succeed. The state’s commitment to education is vast, in terms of both a constitutional mandate and billions of dollars. Yet, as we examine the latest DESE budget request, it’s impossible to ignore the contrast between the department’s boldness when asking for money and its apparent bashfulness about what it will deliver to Missouri’s students. This disconnect reveals a fundamental weakness at the heart of the agency and a failure to act in a way that provides clear, student-focused leadership and results-based accountability.

In its FY 2027 budget request, DESE is seeking just under $9 billion, $7.5 billion of which comes from Missouri’s public coffers, to execute its mission. A large portion of the budget revenue is distributed to districts through the Foundation Formula. Other big-ticket items are the state institutions for students and adults with disabilities, subsidizing childcare for eligible families, and offsetting district transportation costs. Beyond this, there is a laundry list of programs managed by DESE and funded by the state, such as virtual education, teacher of the year awards, and summer enrichment programs. “And while there is a thousand-page accompanying document that explains what each budget line item is, there isn’t any real explanation for why the money is being requested or how it furthers education in Missouri.

Ideally, the budget request should correspond to the Strategic Plan created by DESE, with each line item of the budget request connected to a stated goal of the agency. Unfortunately, the two documents are only very loosely connected, and the disconnect demonstrates a lack of transparent, performance-driven accountability.

According to the DESE Strategic Plan for 2023–2026, DESE’s vision is to improve lives through education via the four pillars of (1) early learning and literacy, (2) success-ready students and workforce development, (3) safe and healthy schools, and (4) educator recruiting and retention. To accomplish this, DESE has given itself the following five performance measures and three-year targets.

1. The percentage of students entering kindergarten ready to learn (from 54% to 60%).
2. The percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced on the English Language Arts state assessment (from 43.5% to 50%).
3. The percentage of students pursuing gainful employment after graduation (from 91% to 94%).
4. The three-year average of initial teacher certificates issued (from 3,662 to 3,850).
5. The three-year average annual teacher retention rate (from 89.9% to 91.2%).

Setting aside the fact that according to its Strategic Plan Scorecard it hasn’t hit any of the targets yet, this very short list of performance measures reflects an agency that is more focused on process and inputs than on measurable student outcomes. Where are the performance measures for math, science and social studies? What are the outcome goals for students with disabilities? Is all of the work of the 215 employees of the Office of Childhood to be measured by just the percentage of students entering kindergarten “ready to learn”? How does one even measure “gainful employment”? At the very least it seems like an easy number to game. How can we possibly measure the appropriateness of a 369-page, $9 billion budget request based on just these five items?

As they return to Jefferson City after the first of the year, it is time for the Missouri legislature to demand more from an agency asking for $9 billion. To hold DESE accountable and ensure taxpayer dollars are serving students first, the legislature should, at a minimum, require DESE to publicly issue an annual report that explicitly links every major budget request line item to a specific, measurable goal in its strategic plan. If a request does not directly advance a key student outcome, it should be subject to maximum scrutiny. And there should be repercussions for missing targets year after year.

The state constitution vests the responsibility for education in the legislature, not DESE. It is high time the legislature exercises its authority and forces DESE to replace its bureaucratic double-speak with real, measurable results for Missouri’s children. Our students deserve a budget that reflects a true commitment to their future, not one that simply preserves the machinery of a struggling bureaucracy.

The post It’s Time to Hold DESE Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One that I found to be particularly interesting is this:

“The State Board of Education supports efforts that provide the best free and appropriate public education for all students.”

Huh. I have long supported giving parents and students access to multiple education options so that they can find the one that best suits their needs. Is the state board agreeing? This would require swapping their support for the best education for all students to the best education for each student. Or is the board saying that it supports efforts for others (the state board) to determine what is best for all students? That doesn’t make sense. Children are unique. They’re not widgets. Why is this statement even one of the 17 priorities?

The Show-Me Institute publishes a legislative Blueprint each year that lays out our priorities for improving the state of Missouri and the lives of those who live here. In many cases, these priorities have model legislation, policy briefs, and even infographics explaining the specifics.

To the extent that DESE and the state board of education have legislative priorities, they should be precise and supported by facts. They should complement the department’s strategic plan and budget. Our test scores are dismal. We’re handing high school diplomas to students who can’t read or do math. Let’s dispense with the throwaway lines.

The post Let’s Expect Better 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.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Marty Lueken, director of EdChoice’s Fiscal Research and Education Center, about the 2025 Fiscal Fact Book. They discuss how much is really spent per student, where the money comes from, why staffing has grown even as enrollment has declined, the fiscal impact of school choice programs, and more.

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Timestamps

00:00 Understanding School Funding in the U.S.
10:03 The Impact of School Choice Programs
20:30 Challenges and Misconceptions in School Funding

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The post The Fiscal Facts Behind School Choice with Marty Lueken appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass talks with Matthew Ladner, senior advisor for education policy implementation at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, about a recent Washington Post article blaming Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts for school closures in the Roosevelt Elementary School District. They unpack the real reasons behind declining enrollment, the role of open enrollment and charter schools, and why most Arizona students exercising school choice are still in public schools. The discussion covers how media narratives overlook parent-driven decisions, the political resistance to letting kids leave low-performing districts, and why open enrollment could be a game changer for states like Missouri. Ladner also shares his broader perspective on the post-COVID shift toward educational self-reliance and what it means for the future of public education.

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Episode Transcript

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Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast this morning, Matt Ladner of the Heritage Foundation. You are no stranger to Arizona education or school choice, right? Nor am I. I feel like I could be wrong, but we met at the Goldwater Institute around the year 2002. Does that sound right? It’s been a minute and it was so—

Matthew Ladner (00:03)
That could be, yes, indeed.

Susan Pendergrass (00:28)
It was surprising to me to see in the Washington Post a week or so ago, basically a hit piece on Arizona education. Because oftentimes Arizona’s held up like Florida as one of the states that’s really making strides in both test scores overall, but in particular in Arizona, test scores and growth scores for low-income kids. They’ve really taken bold moves and made an actual difference in outcomes.

And yet we have this piece that says because Arizona is giving parents the option of a scholarship instead of an assigned public school, that is killing this poor Roosevelt Elementary School in Phoenix. I assume you saw the article.

Matthew Ladner (01:08)
I did indeed. Well, so I moved to Arizona in 2003. Of course, I was doing work here before I moved here. So we probably met the year before at the Goldwater Institute.

Susan Pendergrass (01:10)
What’s your take? What’s your hot take?

Matthew Ladner (01:24)
The first I heard of the Roosevelt Elementary School District was in 2005, when someone I worked with had a child who was attending a Roosevelt school and was brutally assaulted. By brutally assaulted, I mean rushed to the emergency room based on what happened to this child.

Susan Pendergrass (01:39)
My gosh.

Matthew Ladner (01:49)
Obviously, the school administration did not react well. In fact, they questioned whether the attack had been provoked—classic blame-the-victim. At that time, I put my coworker in touch with someone who did informally what we would today call navigation—helping people find schools.

Susan Pendergrass (01:59)
Thanks.

Matthew Ladner (02:13)
At that time, it was incredibly difficult to find a school for this woman’s children. The school year had already started. There were charter schools in South Phoenix, where the Roosevelt Elementary School District is located, but they had waitlists. We had scholarship tax credits, but the school year had already started, the money had already been committed, and there were waitlists.

We had open enrollment, but school districts were not interested in taking students from Roosevelt. In fact, I recall my coworker calling about an open enrollment transfer, and when she said her kids attended Roosevelt Elementary, they hung up the phone on her. It was visceral. She was almost as stuck as she would have been in 1993, the year before Arizona started any kind of school choice.

Fast-forward 20 years, no one in Arizona is stuck like that anymore. Every child has access to an ESA program. While only a minority actually use it, it’s available to everyone. That, I believe, motivates these drive-by shooting journalistic exercises, because very powerful vested interests don’t like people having the option of leaving.

If you read the Washington Post article, the unstated hypothesis is that the world would be a better place if people like my former coworker did not have the option of going somewhere else.

Susan Pendergrass (04:04)
That’s exactly right.

They chronicle the closing of an elementary school in that district. People are sad, heartbroken, and anxious. It’s a tragic story. But dwindling enrollment is less due to the ESA program and more due to the fact that in Arizona, you can pick any public school in the state.

In fact, they cite one group of low-income parents of color who started their own micro-school to avoid going to that school. Yet the counterfactual is: “If only they didn’t have the option of leaving, this school would stay open.” As if we should have kept kids trapped in a failing school. Hard to believe that’s the case in 2025.

Matthew Ladner (04:52)
Absolutely.

It’s offensive to argue the world would be better if people didn’t have the option of leaving a situation that wasn’t working for their child. The reality is, the largest form of school choice in Arizona remains district open enrollment.

Back in 2017, a study of Phoenix-area school districts found that the number of open enrollment kids—within and between districts—was about twice the number of charter school students. And Arizona has the nation’s largest charter sector.

Susan Pendergrass (05:42)
About how many kids are in charter schools?

Matthew Ladner (05:44)
Today it’s around 21% of public school enrollment. Back in 2017 it was about 16%.

Open enrollment is the King Kong of school choice. If Arizona has a school choice justice league, Superman is district open enrollment. Then come charter schools, and trailing far behind are private choice programs.

I do understand people don’t like school closures. Even schools that are underperforming and half-empty have emotional attachment. When you move to close them, people say, “My grandfather graduated from that school—how dare you close it!”

Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
No, yes.

Matthew Ladner (06:55)
State data shows Roosevelt has 6,500 kids who live in the district and attend its schools. But 5,700 kids live in Roosevelt and attend a charter. Another 2,700 attend a different district. About 800 use an ESA.

A final report showed only 129 ESA students previously attended a Roosevelt school. If you’re running a 6,500-student district, you don’t close five schools over 129 students. The Post article was misguided and misleading. Roosevelt’s enrollment has been declining since about 2006. There’s also the baby bust since 2007, which Arizona has worse than most states.

Susan Pendergrass (09:11)
Right. And in addition to bad reporting, the article says this ESA program “offers a window into the GOP vision for K–12 education.” In other words, nothing to do with what parents want. It’s supposedly a GOP political strategy to kill public schools.

That’s damaging because a lot of people don’t read past the headline. In Missouri, we don’t even have open enrollment. Some of our lowest-performing districts demand to be carved out from letting kids leave because they believe they’ll all leave and the district will collapse.

For example, in Ferguson, only 3% of 8th graders are proficient in math. Yet they don’t want kids to leave, even though they’re arguably not even fulfilling the constitutional duty to provide a free and fair public education.

Matthew Ladner (11:02)
Yeah, it’s bad all around. The Fordham Institute’s open enrollment map of Ohio shows every urban district is surrounded by districts that don’t participate. Arizona is the opposite. Almost all districts do open enrollment, including Scottsdale Unified—where about 25% of kids come from outside the district.

They do that because 9,000 kids who live in Scottsdale attend elsewhere. Financial incentives pushed even wealthy districts to open up.

Susan Pendergrass (13:10)
Right.

Matthew Ladner (13:23)
The Post piece framed this as a GOP vision, but really it’s about giving families dignity and autonomy. The underlying hypothesis was that low-income Hispanic and African American parents in Roosevelt are doing something wrong by making the best choices for their kids. That’s offensive, and bad reporting on top of it.

Susan Pendergrass (14:14)
Right. In Missouri, we rank all schools. When we launched that website, protesters said it was racist because many low-performing schools enrolled Black and brown kids. But those kids are already stuck in F schools. Shouldn’t we let them out?

Instead, the approach is: “Let’s not tell them it’s an F school, and if they find out, let’s not let them out.” That’s insulting to parents.

Meanwhile, in St. Louis, schools are losing kids but the district passed a moratorium on new charters because they know a new charter would fill up immediately.

Matthew Ladner (15:42)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (15:43)
What’s your global view? In Missouri, we’re fighting lawsuits against our scholarship program. Do you see this as a last gasp, or what?

Matthew Ladner (16:03)
Not a last gasp. The struggle will continue past our lifetimes. But we are making progress.

The reason you see lawsuits and agenda-driven journalism is that there was an awakening during COVID. People realized the district system isn’t run for parents—it’s captured by unions and contractors. Schools are not about your kids. They’re about employees and contracts.

Now we’re seeing a self-reliance movement in education—school choice, homeschooling, co-ops. It’s growing. And frankly, Randy Weingarten’s actions during COVID made her the poster child for this failure.

Susan Pendergrass (18:18)
In terms of keeping schools closed and how she reacted?

Matthew Ladner (18:21)
Exactly. If you didn’t realize during COVID that the system wasn’t about you, someone needs to draw you a picture.

Susan Pendergrass (18:33)
The protests with coffins in the street, saying we were sending teachers to their deaths—they overplayed it a bit.

Matthew Ladner (18:37)
Yeah. And now we’re in a different environment. Young parents I talk to say there’s no way they’re sending kids to district schools.

That’s not to say everyone in districts is bad. There are good teachers trapped in a bad system. But the exciting part is teachers leaving to start their own schools. In Florida, there’s nothing stopping them, and it’s beautiful to see.

Susan Pendergrass (19:46)
Yes. In Missouri, we’ve cut off the teacher-as-entrepreneur option. It’s too bad. Every summer, parents reach out to me desperate to transfer kids to other districts, but we have nothing for them—except paying very high tuition.

It reminds me of your coworker stuck in Roosevelt. People say, “Just move.” But not everyone can move, nor should they have to.

Matthew Ladner (20:49)
Right.

Susan Pendergrass (21:09)
When I see a major outlet still saying in 2025 that ESAs are killing public education, when it’s really poor parents finding alternatives, that’s sad.

Matthew Ladner (21:28)
Exactly. It’s not up to me or lawmakers to decide where kids go. Families should decide, and that’s as it should be.

Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Thank you so much for joining us. We have to keep this in front of people, and I appreciate you coming on.

Matthew Ladner (22:05)
Thank you, Susan.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post What the Media Gets Wrong About School Choice with Matthew Ladner appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On the surface, school board elections seem like they should serve an accountability role. The logic is straightforward: if school policies veer too far left or right, or if schools underperform, voters can replace the board. School board members, knowing they can be removed, enact representative and sensible policies to avoid this fate.

However, in practice, it doesn’t work this way.

One reason is that school board elections are usually held off-cycle, when voter turnout is low. This gives outsized influence to organized interest groups—namely teachers’ unions—even though they represent a small fraction of the population. There is clear evidence that teachers’ unions have great sway in school board elections. The result is that election outcomes reflect the will of a small segment of the population with high personal stakes.

This recently released study from the Annenberg Institute reinforces my skepticism about the value of democratic accountability. The authors analyzed data from over 50,000 school board elections across 16 states, including Missouri. They find that school board elections are often non-competitive. Over a third of elections are uncontested and, as in other elections (e.g., state and federal legislative elections), when incumbents run, they usually win (more than 80 percent of the time). Most school board turnover isn’t due to electoral defeat, but incumbents simply choosing not to run again.

The influence of interest groups like teachers’ unions likely contributes to these findings. Potential competitors for school board seats know that if they run against a union’s preferred candidate, they’ll lose. In the authors’ words, “if competitive races characterized by retrospective voting are indeed essential to the health of local democracy and public education, our results paint a grim picture.” (p. 4; note that “retrospective voting” is a political science term that means voters make decisions based on the past performance of the party or candidate in power.)

So, democratic accountability in education is not what we want it to be. Can it be fixed? I’m not optimistic, but one change that would help would be to move school board elections onto the same cycle as general elections. This would increase voter turnout and reduce the influence of interest groups, though the interest groups would fight such a change. It would also help if we had more transparent reporting about school performance. There is no denying that local voters are apathetic about schools, but maybe if voters in low-performing districts better understood school performance, they would be more inclined to act.

Even if changes like these help, democratic accountability is unlikely to become a powerful lever for change. This strengthens the case for investing in alternative approaches: market-based accountability, and even top-down accountability from the state.

The post Does Democratic Accountability Work in Public Education? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Noah Devine, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public Schools Association, about how charter schools in St. Louis are responding after the recent tornado damaged multiple campuses. They discuss the need for flexibility for displaced families, how charter schools are working to reopen quickly, and the broader importance of school choice, especially in times of crisis. Noah also explains why Missouri’s lack of open enrollment makes recovery harder, and shares resources for families navigating this difficult time.

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Transcript: Schools After the Storm with Noah Devine

Download a copy of the transcript here

Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Today I’m going to be talking to Noah Devine of Missouri Charter Public School Association. You basically represent, to a certain extent, the charter schools across Kansas City and St. Louis. To a certain extent, your organization helps them navigate policy processes, funding processes, and things like that in Missouri. So thanks for joining us.

Noah Devine (00:19)
Thanks for having me on, and yeah, you’re exactly right. We are a membership-based, dues-based organization that supports, represents, and advocates for public charter schools here in the state of Missouri.

Susan Pendergrass (00:30)
Well, like the Show-Me Institute, a few weeks ago, many schools in the St. Louis area were affected by a tornado. We lost the top floor of our building when it came through. I know that I’ve been reading that St. Louis Public Schools have about six buildings that are affected by the tornado. How many charter schools were affected?

Noah Devine (00:50)
Yeah, it was obviously really terrible what happened in St. Louis with that tornado. In total, seven charter school buildings were directly impacted. None of them will be compromised from opening this fall, so that’s a very good thing. Two of them were not able to open the week that it happened or the week immediately after. One of them has an annex that was very badly damaged, and so they’re going to have to rework how they meet the needs of their students. The building impact is very significant. What worries me the most is that they’re doing everything they can to meet the needs of their families and students who were directly impacted. Over the summer and into the fall, I think we’re going to see how things ultimately shake out. I’m quite worried that we’re going to have a large increase in students and families experiencing homelessness, and meeting those families’ needs will be really important.

Susan Pendergrass (01:41)
Why do you imagine that St. Louis Public Schools say six of their buildings can’t be used, but charter schools are going to find a way to use theirs? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Noah Devine (01:53)
Yeah, I honestly don’t know. Some of it could always be just good old-fashioned dumb luck, the location of buildings. I think that’s probably most likely. I do think the buildings that were more directly impacted and were charter schools were in better condition. I don’t know the condition of some of the SLPS buildings, but I think charter schools were able to mitigate things a little more readily.

Susan Pendergrass (02:30)
This is what I was thinking, because we had to scramble to find a place to work. Some of us are in temporary office space. Some people are working from home, and it really does affect people. I assume there are many students whose own homes were affected. It’s summer now, but we’re trying to figure out what to do in the fall. St. Louis Public Schools has said that the kids in these six schools are all being reassigned to new schools.

Wouldn’t it make sense, given that this is an emergency—an act of God type of situation—that families could be given flexibility over where their kids go? If they’re displaced, they might want their kids to stay with the same teacher and group of friends, or they might want to go somewhere closer to where they are displaced or where their job is. It seems to me this is the time for flexibility. What do you think?

Noah Devine (03:27)
Could not agree more. Setting aside the natural disaster of a tornado, we fundamentally believe, as all of our schools do, that the decision of where to send your kid—whether it be homeschool, private school, charter public school, district school, magnet school, whatever—is the decision of a family. In a time like this, we need to enact provisions, not dissimilar from what we did during COVID, to make sure families have what they need.

If a family in North St. Louis lost everything, let’s not upset the apple cart. If they want to stay at that school, we have to make sure they can get there. McKinney-Vento is the federal classification for students who are homeless. If you lost your home and are temporarily living with someone else, you meet that designation and can stay at your school. We’re working with charter schools and DESE to ensure that’s clearly communicated. But that designation comes with a cost, usually transportation.

We need help to meet that need. Big picture, we should always be trying to meet the needs of families with choice in mind. During emergencies, it’s even more necessary to push through red tape and ensure we aren’t telling families that, on top of everything else, they now have to move schools.

Susan Pendergrass (05:36)
Do you know if the governor has indicated he’s open to an emergency executive order to ensure St. Louis families have maximum flexibility?

Noah Devine (05:47)
I don’t want to speak for the governor’s office or DESE. But I’ve been extremely impressed with how they’ve moved to get direct support to families in St. Louis. During special session a couple of weeks ago, a huge pot of money was allocated to meet those needs. I’m confident they’ll do everything they can within the law. That said, Missouri does not have open enrollment, which limits flexibility. It’s come close many times, but hasn’t passed.

Susan Pendergrass (06:56)
In times of crisis, like pandemics or tornadoes, the need for flexibility becomes very apparent. You and I followed legislation last year that would have allowed students from outside the city to enroll in a charter school. It made so much sense and still couldn’t get across the finish line.

Noah Devine (07:47)
Yeah.

Susan Pendergrass (07:48)
Families often face personal emergencies too. A child being bullied, a move to live with grandparents—these are real. Charter school leaders want to keep kids where they belong. We just haven’t found the right words to convince enough people.

Noah Devine (08:21)
I couldn’t agree more. First and foremost, our thoughts are with the families impacted. But this is when policy limitations become very real. Missouri is surrounded by states that allow more enrollment flexibility. We shouldn’t lock families into bad situations, whether the crisis is natural or personal. We need to continue pushing for change.

Susan Pendergrass (10:04)
In Kansas City, many top-notch charter schools have strong reputations. If families live on the Kansas side, they can cross the river and choose from any school. Kansas has one of the strongest open enrollment laws in the country. Missouri should follow that example. Not every school is right for every child. And families shouldn’t have to move to find a better fit.

Noah Devine (11:04)
Exactly. I read an article recently about this. People often assume open enrollment would destroy public education. It won’t. Families pick different colleges for their kids based on interests and needs. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to K-12?

Susan Pendergrass (11:58)
Pell Grants follow students to the college of their choice. It works. But in K-12, it’s somehow controversial. I was asked yesterday on the radio about some charter schools closing in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Noah Devine (12:26)
Great question. First, we can’t underestimate the impact of school closures on families. It’s very real and unfortunate. But charter schools are designed to be more accountable. If families leave or the school isn’t performing, it should close. That’s how accountability works.

We are in a period of declining enrollment nationwide. All public schools will have to make tough choices. The charter system allows closures based on whether families want to go there and whether the school is serving them well. That’s how it should work.

Susan Pendergrass (14:30)
Mm-hmm.

Noah Devine (14:45)
When you lead a charter school, you have to earn it. Every student is there by choice. That makes charter schools unique. Missouri ranks among the top five states in charter school performance, according to CREDO at Stanford. We should take that seriously.

Susan Pendergrass (15:36)
This reminds me of the Unsafe School Choice Option under federal law. If a school is deemed persistently dangerous, students have the right to transfer. Missouri has never labeled a school that way, even though the data suggests otherwise. But charter schools already give families that power. If parents feel unsafe, they can simply pull their child out.

Noah Devine (16:37)
Exactly.

Susan Pendergrass (16:50)
That’s how it should be in all public schools. If parents in St. Louis want to know what resources are available for displaced children or schools, where should they go?

Noah Devine (17:26)
Start with our website, mocharterschools.org. We have a resource page for families affected by the tornado. Also, we work with Show Me Mo Schools, which runs a common application system. Their site is schoolappstl.org. And finally, DESE’s website has guidance and updates, though it could use improvement.

Susan Pendergrass (18:12)
Good luck with that. Thanks again, Noah.

Noah Devine (18:20)
Thanks, and take care.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Schools After the Storm with Noah Devine appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I’m often asked if school choice is an effective policy. In other words—do states that let parents easily choose from a number of publicly funded options for their children do better than those that don’t? We need NAEP to know the answer. Also, folks want to know if Missouri is improving or getting worse when it comes to educating our students. Well, the state has changed its own test several times in the last decade, so the only way we can know is to look at NAEP scores.

It’s difficult to achieve accountability in a vacuum. Gutting something in the name of cutting costs can be costly in itself. Missourians should hope that NAEP, federal education data collection, and the federal role in researching what works in education get rebuilt quickly and thoughtfully.

The post Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater appeared first on Show-Me Institute.