If we believe it’s essential for schools to teach core academic skills—like reading and math—then we should support the tools that help us measure those skills. Statewide standardized tests remain our best tool for understanding how much students are learning. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets counted.

However, there is growing opposition to state testing in Missouri on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, the education establishment has long resisted all forms of accountability, and what better way to shut down accountability than to stop measuring how students perform in school? The left has been surprisingly effective in undermining the credibility of state tests, leading many to believe they don’t measure what matters. Standardized tests have been criticized for being too narrow, unobjective, and even racist. (I wish I were exaggerating on the last point, but I am not.) At the university level, we saw a brief movement to eliminate SAT and ACT requirements—only to see many institutions walk those changes back once they realized these tests provide crucial insight into academic readiness.

Meanwhile, on the right, the opposition to testing is relatively new. Not long ago, political conservatives were strong advocates for test-based accountability. No Child Left Behind, the largest test-based accountability policy in U.S. history, was ushered in under George W. Bush in the early 2000s. But today, it seems that testing has been swept up in a general push to shrink government and localize decision-making. In Missouri, testing is viewed as part of the state’s top-down policy agenda and a threat to local control.

This left-right alliance is playing out now in Jefferson City. Senate Bill 360, which would dismantle uniform statewide testing and accountability in Missouri, is sponsored by Republican Senator Jill Carter and supported by the National Education Association, a group typically aligned with the left.

All of this is unfortunate, because the truth is we need state standardized tests. The Missouri tests are not what many have been led to believe. They are objective, they are not racially biased, and they are not political. They are not concoctions brewed up in the back room of state government—rather, they are developed by independent experts, grounded in years of research, and focused almost entirely on reading and math.

Without statewide testing, we risk replacing hard data with empty assurances. School districts will insist students are learning—they’re doing exceptionally well, in fact!—and we’ll have no choice but to trust them.

An extreme policy would be to end testing entirely, but an equally damaging policy would be to abandon a common state test and allow school districts to use their own tests. This sounds appealing to local-control advocates, and in fact is the proposal on the table in SB360. But if this were to happen, it would be impossible to compare outcomes across districts, leaving us in the same place as if we had no testing at all.

If you’re unhappy with the direction schools are heading, just wait until we don’t have state tests—and the hard data provided by the tests—to keep them in line.

The post The Testing Bogeyman Is Alive and Well in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Governor Kehoe’s first budget does not include the $300 million requested for the formula (although it does include $200 million in other additional funding). So, let’s break down the requested increase to see if the governor is refusing to “fully fund the formula,” as accused. Perhaps instead the requested increase is not reasonable.

Technically, the SAT reflects the current expenditures per student in Missouri’s highest-performing districts, referred to in the law as Performance Districts. The thinking is that what these districts spent should be adequate. But what does it take to be a Performance District? The way the law has been interpreted is that Performance Districts are those that receive at least 90 percent of their possible points on their Annual Performance Report (APR) under Missouri’s accountability system.

The accountability system, also known as MSIP 6, gives districts points based on a rubric of items considered important by DESE and the state board of education—although some are only loosely related to performance. The FY 2026 DESE budget request relies on 2022 APR points to calculate the SAT. In 2022, districts could earn up to 52 APR points for attendance, having 8th graders fill out an Individual Career and Academic Plan, administering a Kindergarten Entry Assessment to incoming kindergartners, submitting their required financial reports on time, conducting a Climate and Culture Survey, and submitting a Continuous Improvement Plan. All 29 of the Performance Districts received 52 out of 52 points for these categories.

But let’s take a closer look. Eight of the districts only serve students in kindergarten through 8th grade—they don’t have high schools. These districts had only 114 possible APR points, and 52 of them had nothing to do with student performance.

In two of the Performance Districts, Leopold R-III and Ste. Genevieve, fewer than half of the students tested scored Proficient or higher in English/language arts. In another Performance District, Mansfield R-IV, just 52 percent of high school graduates met any benchmark for being considered college or career ready when they graduated. In Brunswick R-II just 28.6 percent of graduates received an advanced credential prior to graduating, compared to 100 percent of graduates in Jefferson C-123. Are we sure these are the best 29 districts out of more than 500?

Here’s the problem: weak accountability systems don’t hold districts accountable. In the case of Missouri, that consequence bleeds over to funding. More than half of the Performance Districts are very small, with fewer than 300 students in the entire district. Spending tends to be higher in these districts because there are few economies of scale. That higher spending leads to hundreds of more dollars for all 850,000 students in the state when it leads to a budget request to add $300 million in state spending.

So before calling foul on the governor’s budget, let’s make sure that the DESE budget request actually makes sense.

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Missouri quietly released last year’s Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores for schools and districts recently. Because Missouri, like most states, currently has a chronic absenteeism problem and because Missouri chose the broadest rule for suppressing data due to privacy concerns, dozens of districts have no useable public test score data in either English/language arts (ELA) or math. How are these districts doing? I have no idea. But I do know that the average spending per student in the “no test score districts” was over $27,000 last year.

The state board of education’s reactions to last year’s statewide test scores, which were dismal, included the two standards—not enough teachers and not enough money. They threw in COVID and classroom behavior for good measure. And despite having multiple districts with fewer than 10 percent of students scoring at grade level on the MAP exam, the state board decided to keep designating 512 out of 518 school districts as fully accredited and have the remaining six be partially accredited—grade inflation at its best.

What if we leaned into testing to find out how we’re doing? What if we didn’t blame money or the kids? Success Academy, a well-known charter network in New York City that enrolls almost exclusively low-income students of color, had to rent an exhibition hall to accommodate students taking an AP exam this spring because there were so many of them. The academy’s founder and CEO, Eva Moskowitz said, “With rampant grade inflation and inconsistent state standards, AP and SAT tests are a critical tool . . . especially for low-income students of color.”

As the pandemic moves further into the rearview mirror, we need a clearer picture of the toll it has taken on Missouri’s children and their futures. We need more accountability, not less.

The post What if We Decided to Lean in to Testing? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is some good news, though, for high school students in St. Louis. Believe STL Academy, a charter school, is set to open next fall. Believe STL is modeled after the Believe Circle City (BCC) high school in Indianapolis. BCC works with “historically underestimated youth” and helps them become successful adults. BCC has achieved dramatic results, such as having 30 percent of its students pass a college-level Advanced Placement exam, spurring dramatic growth in the SAT scores of its students, and having extremely high (92 percent) average daily attendance.

Sadly, SLPS is suing to prevent this school from opening. The case rests on an administrative matter—SLPS claims it wasn’t informed that the school would be opening. The charter school’s application was approved by both the Missouri Public Charter School Commission and the state board of education. Yet, the SLPS Board wants to derail it. The board president said, “There are too many schools in St. Louis right now.”

The number of schools, filled or nearly empty, has nothing to do with the quality of those schools when students are assigned to them. When students get to choose, it does. Only those schools that can attract and keep students will stay open. Blocking charter schools, especially those with proven track records, is akin to trapping children on a sinking ship. Shouldn’t we instead be building a system of schools that best serves as many students as possible?

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The worst news for Missouri is in the Workforce category. Metrics for this category include the concentration of STEM workers and the percentage of workers with bachelor’s degrees, associate’s degrees, and Industry Recognized Credentials (IRCs). It also includes net migration of educated workers, worker training programs, right-to-work laws, and worker productivity. Missouri ranked 49th out of 50 states in Workforce, garnering just 151 of the 400 possible points.

There are a few things we know about Missouri’s workforce now and its prospects for the future. The percentage of Missourians with college degrees has been declining in recent years. The percentage of Missourians with bachelor’s degrees has declined from 31.9 percent in 2020 to 31.7 percent in 2022. (For reference, it was 25.6 percent in 2010.) Not going up as fast or remaining stagnant is problematic. Declining is very bad news.

We also know that just 60 percent of our 61,200 high school graduates in 2022 were considered to be college or career ready when they left with their diplomas. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) determines college or career readiness by scores on the ACT or SAT college entrance exams, the ACT WorkKeys assessment, which measures career readiness skills, the Accuplacer assessment, which is a college placement exam, and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) military assessment.

So, our workforce is already in bad shape, and we are handing diplomas to nearly 25,000 high school graduates who are known to not be college or career ready. Wouldn’t you think that our leaders would be addressing this like the crisis that it is?

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The problem is that the report quickly glosses past their acknowledgment of “decades of economic underperformance, population stagnation and racial division” to a future of growth and expansion in a mere nine years. And the path to achieving this miracle is less than clear. The report is peppered with buzz words, but short on detail.

As someone who spends time studying education policy and results across the state of Missouri, I’m very curious to know how this group plans to turn a school system in which just 18.5 percent of students score Proficient or above in math into a “talent engine.” The commission wants to ensure “that every student receives quality STEM education and exposure to various occupations beginning in pre-K and continuing through high school”? What does quality STEM education look like and who’s going to teach it? And don’t we have quite a long way to go there, given that the average high school ACT score is currently 16.6?

Action item number four is “Become a talent magnet and engine,” and that’s the only part of the plan that mentions education. “Successful” programs at local community colleges and universities are identified, but fewer than 60 percent of SLPS graduates enroll in college and the report acknowledges their dismal completion rates.

Not to be a wet blanket, but St. Louis is not going to be a talent engine or magnet until we figure out how to better educate the 82 percent of students who are not able to do math at grade level. All the jargon and buzzwords in the world won’t help a district with a mobility rate (a measure of how many kids joined or left a district in a given year) of over 46 percent. Turning this ship around will be difficult and will require big ideas and open-minded thinking.

St. Louis already has quite a few high-performing charter schools, but we could use more. There are existing charter school networks with proven track records of success in STEM education for disadvantaged students. The Denver School for Science and Technology (DSST) network, for example, serves nearly 7,000 students across nine middle schools and six high schools. Just 15 percent of DSST students are white and over 70 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. But here are the numbers that matter: DSST has had 100 percent college acceptance for its high school seniors for the last twelve years in a row. Its average SAT score of 1092 is higher than the national average of 1059. And two-thirds of its graduates become first-generation college students.

DSST is just one example. Cities like Denver that encourage strong portfolios of education options for their students become growth engines. Families want to stay and raise their children in these cities. Putting STEM materials in front of students who are stuck in schools that can’t teach them math isn’t going to cut it. Every parent in the St. Louis region should have several publicly funded options for educating their children—traditional public schools, charter public schools, private schools, or homeschooling. A robust system of choice should be our goal, not waving a wand over the existing system and imagining it will simply transform itself.

The post We Need Actions, Not Words appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I’m doing this for two reasons. First, the state’s fiscal note on a recent ESA bill inaccurately accounts for potential savings. The second reason is due to something that was said during testimony about the bill. Scott Kimble, a lobbyist for the Missouri School Administrators Association, mischaracterized how funding works in Missouri. He said something to the effect of, “Districts like Kirkwood only get $500 from the state. If a student left Kirkwood to use an ESA, the state would only save $500.” That’s simply not the case, and it’s similar to the error found in the fiscal note, which uses an “average” expense for each student.

Now, here’s the real math.

In 2018, Kirkwood spent roughly $12,000 in per pupil operating expenses. Over 92 percent of those funds came from local taxes. Meanwhile, just 6 percent came from the state. As such, the state gave the district an average of $728 per student. On its face, it would appear Kimble was correct. However, the state doesn’t fund the average student in each district. The state funds districts through a formula and that formula pays progressively more for each additional student. Let me illustrate (I don’t have exact figures for Kirkwood, these are just illustrative).

This is how the funding formula works. You multiply the weighted average daily attendance (WADA) by the dollar value modifier (DVM, a proxy for cost of living) and the state adequacy target (SAT). Then, you subtract local effort. The end result is how much money the state is supposed to provide the district. Divide that by WADA and you get a per pupil figure.

What the lobbyist mistakenly did is look at that end result and assume that is how much the state would save if a student left the district and used an ESA.

Here is what would actually happen:

                                                                             Difference=              $6,901           $1.07

Notice what happens. When one fewer student is multiplied by the DVM and SAT, the total state aid required to fund the district drops by the product of those figures. The local effort stays the same in both scenarios. The state doesn’t just save the $728 per student, they save $6,901.

It’s not magic…it’s math!

The post School Choice Cost Savings Isn’t Magic, It’s Math! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A few weeks ago, ACT released Missouri’s 2018 graduating class state report. It reports that a dismal 22 percent of the class of 2018 graduates were college-ready in English, math, reading and science. The test results from the last three years provide a some insight into how well our students are prepared for life after high school.

The graduating classes of 2016, 2017, and 2018 had 100 percent test participation because of DESE’s three-year plan to supply the ACT to all high school juniors. Before the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) provided the ACT to every student, information about test results only applied to the approximately 77 percent of the 2015 class (page 3). It shouldn’t be surprising that average scores declined with the addition of a large group of participants who otherwise wouldn’t have taken the exam. Previously, some students would decline to take the test for financial reasons, but for others it was because they knew they weren’t prepared for such a test, or because they had no intention of going to college and therefore didn’t see any reason to take it. As a group, such students might reasonably be expected to score lower than students who looked at a high ACT score as an important asset in trying to get into a good college and who had the resources to prepare for the exam. But just because the decrease in overall scores can be explained doesn’t mean it should be excused. The ACT still measures readiness for life after high school, and seeing low scores—even from those who don’t plan on going to college—should concern all Missourians.

DESE stated the class of 2018 was the final year of the state provided ACT tests. But the three years of results revealed that when all of our students are tested, there are more students than we originally thought whom high schools are not preparing. Now that we’ve seen the real scope of the problem, will DESE acknowledge the issue or try to sweep it under the rug by celebrating when test scores inevitably go back up next year?

The post ACT Scores Show Students Aren’t Ready for College appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I guess it’s good news that Missouri’s graduation rate in 2017 was nearly 90 percent—higher than the national average. But have we really put those students on the “path to achieve their goals in life”? Or has a high school diploma become little more than a participation trophy?

Consider that in 2017, the percentages of Missouri 11th-graders who scored Proficient or above on the state assessments were 35 percent in English/language arts, 15 percent in math, and 20 percent in science. And, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), just 42.5 percent of 2017 graduates were “College or Career Ready”—meaning that they met or exceeded the state standards for the ACT, SAT, COMPASS, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) or they received and industry recognized credential (IRC).

This is backed up by a 2011 study commissioned by the Missouri Department of Higher Education, which found that 64 percent of Missouri students who were first-time undergraduates at public two-year institutions took at least one remedial course, including 56 percent who needed remedial math. At public four-year institutions the numbers were better, but still one in five students took at least one remedial course. Taking remedial courses is expensive and discouraging.

Recently, stories of “graduation rate malfeasance” have surfaced in nearly 10 states. Nationally, graduation rates are at an all-time high even as rates of proficiency have stagnated or declined. What good is it to increase graduation rates if academic performance and college readiness aren’t improving?

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in 2015, moves much of the responsibility for school accountability back to states. ESSA required states to submit accountability plans that include graduation rates as a measure of school quality. Most states are now implementing their approved plans and, sure enough, graduation rates are taking off. Does that mean we’re holding schools more accountable? Probably not.

As was pointed out in a recent essay by the Show-Me Institute, accountability plans—even the most complicated ones – can be toothless, gamed, and even ignored. Missouri has an opportunity to design and implement an accountability plan that gives parents meaningful information about how their child’s school is performing. They can also give parents options when their child’s school doesn’t measure up or isn’t a good fit.

A high school diploma should be more than a piece of paper. Missouri’s education system is responsible for doing more than just issuing diplomas – they should be making sure that there is something behind the diplomas they issue.

The post What’s Going On with High School Graduation Rates in Missouri? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Interestingly, a growing body of research is finding that traits like grit might be more important to children’s success in life than traditional academic knowledge.

The Washington Post recently reported:

[Angela] Duckworth, a former middle school teacher [and University of Pennsylvania researcher], is known for helping to popularize the notion that a student’s success is correlated to that student’s level of self-control and “grittiness,” or ability to keep working toward goals.

Her research has shown that grittier students are more likely to graduate from high school, score higher on SAT and ACT exams and be more physically fit. Grittier students also are less likely to get divorced, and they typically experience fewer career changes.

Dr. Thomas Hoerr, head of New City School in Saint Louis, is the author of Fostering Grit: How Do I Prepare My Students for the Real World? Hoerr’s instructional suggestions echo Duckworth’s findings. “Teachers should embrace teaching the whole child, and should consciously seek to foster the intrapersonal and interpersonal qualities which will make a difference in life—such as grit,” Hoerr said in an email.

Given the fact that grit is important, and it appears that teachers can have an effect on the “grittiness” of students, there is a movement around the country to link measures of students’ grit to the evaluation of schools and teachers.

Even though they both feel that fostering grittiness is important, neither Hoerr nor Duckworth are pushing for tying teacher evaluations to student grittiness.

Why? The biggest issue is measurement. Student self-assessments are commonly used to measure social and emotional factors, requiring students to self-evaluate their level of hopefulness about their future and asking questions like, “Did you laugh or smile a lot yesterday?” Duckworth has noted that grittier students, those who tend to have more self-awareness, are more likely to rate themselves lower. The very thing that makes them gritty drives them to hold themselves to a higher standard. If teacher or school evaluations are based on this measure, they will be inaccurate.

While grit is clearly important, the measures for determining teachers’ impact on it are not ready for prime time. It took decades to be able to link simple math and reading scores, and we’re still working out the bugs on those. It will be some time before new measures are available.

The post From Standardized Tests to Standardized Character appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As I have written on the Show-Me Daily blog, “Since 1992, Missouri has seen nearly a 40 percent increase in per-pupil spending. Yet we have seen little in terms of increases in academic achievement.”

A new study by Andrew Coulson, of the Cato Institute, adds more evidence to support this claim. Using school funding data and student scores from the SAT, he compared the increase in spending with changes in SAT scores for the past 40 years. Before anyone complains that most Missourians don’t take the SAT, it is important to note that Coulson takes this into account and uses statistical procedures to account for the different types of students who have taken the SAT.

He demonstrates that education funding has increase precipitously, while SAT scores have remained relatively flat.

Whether looking at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), as I did in my previous post, or the SAT, it is clear that student achievement has practically flat-lined. Evidence from the past four decades suggests that money alone will not cure these ills.

The post Education Needs More Money, STAT! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Having the ability to customize their child’s curriculum is one of the main reasons parents choose to homeschool. Some worry that the new standards may infringe on their ability to do so.

The creators of the SAT and ACT are already working on aligning their tests to Common Core. Public schools are changing their curriculum to align with the new standards and tests. There is concern that homeschoolers will struggle on the redesigned state and national standardized tests unless they also align their curriculum. This defeats the purpose of homeschooling – to have greater flexibility and autonomy.

The more state standardized tests and college entrance exams align to the Common Core, the more textbook companies will align their curriculum to the Common Core. Over time, this could leave homeschooling parents with fewer and fewer alternatives from which to choose. It is difficult to know what the exact impact will be; what is certain is that the issue is not going away anytime soon. Parents, whether homeschooling or not, should continue to question Common Core and to educate themselves about the standards and their potential effects.

The post What Does Common Core Mean For Homeschoolers? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Like Chicago, the difficulty of attracting high-quality individuals into the classroom is a problem we face here in Missouri. Teachers score lower than average on a number of standardized tests, includingthe SAT, the GRE, and the Armed Forces Qualification Test (see here). A study using Missouri data found that 20 percent of teachers scored a 19 or lower on the ACT and 69.6 percent scored a 24 or lower.

There are number of issues that perpetuate this problem of below average individuals entering the classroom. For starters, schools seemingly do a poor job of seeking out high-performing individuals.

In a recent study I co-authored for the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, we examined the application documents of 50 randomly selected Arkansas school districts. What we found was pretty alarming. More schools asked teachers what high school they attended (67 percent) than how they did on the teacher licensure exams (13 percent). Approximately half asked for the applicant’s GPA and none asked for ACT or SAT scores. Certainly scoring higher on a test does not necessarily make you a better teacher, but there is ample evidence to suggest higher-scoring individuals are higher-performing teachers.

Even if schools did request academic information from applicants, they would have little leverage to attract high-performing individuals. The single-salary schedule, which is in place in almost all public schools in Missouri, does not allow administrators to pay individuals more for their aptitude or their potential for being a great teacher. In essence, we get below-average teachers because we treat all the above-average ones like they are . . . average.

The post Help Wanted: High-Performing Teachers Need Not Apply appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While I’m generally more optimistic that scores can rise, in this case I agree that student achievement is unlikely to change. A test prep course could help if students are simply unfamiliar with the test, or if they just need a little extra practice with the kind of questions that appear on it. But if low scores reflect a deeper problem, as I suspect they do for many New York students, last-minute test prep won’t make a difference.

The best course of action would be to improve schooling for younger students, years before they take college admissions exams. Then, by the time they get to high school, they won’t struggle with the math and vocabulary found in the SAT.

New York shouldn’t give up on current high school students, but it needs to help them build a stronger foundation of knowledge than what they’ll get from a course on test-taking strategies. The department could stick with the online education model, and instead of explicitly offering free test prep, it could open English or math courses similar to the St. Louis Public Schools’ virtual school. Course materials needn’t teach to the test, although students whose skills improved would do better on test day as a consequence. To preserve the college admissions focus, the department could use a practice SAT to place students into different course levels.

New York shouldn’t limit its use of online education to preparing students for one test. We want students to be prepared for the next high school course they take, and for whatever courses they take beyond high school, too.

The post Quick Fixes Won’t Raise Test Scores appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A mother explains why she pays for tutoring:

“It’s quite pricey, but compared to private school, which averages about $20,000 for kindergarten, the price is right,” she said of the tutoring. “I just want the opportunity to have a choice.”

Parents will go to great lengths to have choices, even if it means subjecting their children to SAT-style practice tests at age three. Anyone who’s opposed to drilling preschoolers should support policies that would build more choices into the system. Little kids could relax if the gates to choice schools weren’t so heavily guarded.

(For more about kindergarten, see Matthew Kahn’s post applying mechanism design to the admissions process.)

The post More Kindergarten Admissions Craziness appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The average SAT verbal scores of prospective teachers passing the Praxis tests to teach English, science, social studies, math and art from 2002 to 2005 were higher than those of prospective teachers in the mid-1990s — and were also higher than the average SAT scores for all college graduates, the report said.

I wonder how much of this improvement has to do with alternative teacher certification, which allows people who majored in subjects other than education, and who may have work experience in other fields, to become teachers. (Statistics on the growing numbers of teachers who have completed alternative routes are available at www.teach-now.org.) Under alternative certification, a retired scientist could teach a high school biology course or a history professor could teach AP Government without having to go back to college for an undergraduate education degree.

The article notes that the SAT scores of potential elementary school and physical education teachers are still below the average for college graduates. For physical education, I don’t think we need to care. Teaching kids about basketball and teamwork just doesn’t require a lot of complex reasoning. But maybe we still have work to do at the elementary level.

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