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The post No Adult Left Behind, How Politics Hijacks Education Policy with Vlad Kogan 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.

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Michael Hartney is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, an associate professor in the department of political science at Boston College, and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a research affiliate at Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), and, in 2020-21, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell Hoover National Fellow.

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The post How Unions Choose School Board Candidates with Michael Hartney appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In: letting parents find an education setting that works for their families

Out: giving every student just one assigned option

 So many reasons have popped up for this one in the last year or two. Parents want their children and everyone around them masked. Parents don’t want their children to have to wear a mask all day. Parents want everyone vaccinated. Parents want vaccination to be a personal choice. Parents like, or don’t care, about their school’s curriculum. Parents care a lot about their school’s curriculum. Regardless, the single, assigned option is “out” and letting every family avail themselves of at least one alternative is “in.”

In: school board meetings that include parents and the community

Out: school board meetings with no one but the board in attendance

People have discovered an interesting fact in the past year—school boards actually impact what happens in school buildings, including selecting curricula. Who knew? School boards create textbook selection committees. They hear from textbook publishers. They weigh the options and approve curricula. A broader understanding of their role will (hopefully) make broader participation in their decisions “in” and forgetting they exist “out.”

In: innovative new learning environments

Out: every student learning in a room with a teacher at the front and 20 other students

 When schools shut down, parents didn’t just go along with that program. They joined with other families and created micro-schools in someone’s basement. They sent their children to karate academies or churches for guided virtual learning. They decided to join the homeschool movement. They founded Boys and Girls Clubs, or some other nonprofit, that morphed into an outright school. Necessity is the mother of invention, and public education became inventive. The 1950s education model got tossed “out” in favor of bringing “in” new models of learning.

In: giving teachers autonomy and flexibility

Out: step-and-ladder pay scales

School shutdowns also affected teachers. Some teachers didn’t like teaching virtually; others loved it. Some teachers discovered that teaching just ten students in a micro-school means applying skills more directly, and no staff meetings or red tape. There is a massive opportunity for good teachers to take on gig work as tutors. Joining a school district at the age of 23 and staying in the same district until the age of 55 to be “taken care of” with a pension until death is so “out,” and teachers as entrepreneurs who can be paid directly to teach is “in.”

This list could go on. The bad news is that we are in the middle of a tough road back to recovering learning loss for so many students. The great news is that we’ve been forced change some of the old ways of doing things in favor of parent empowerment and engagement, systemwide flexibility and autonomy, and the notion that one size definitely does not fit all.

The post Year-end In-and-out list appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Michael T. Hartney joined the Boston College political science faculty in fall 2017. Previously he was Assistant Professor of Politics at Lake Forest College. Professor Hartney’s main research and teaching interests include: state and local government, interest groups, and public policy.

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The post How to Make School Boards More Responsive with Michael Hartney 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.

In Springfield, Missouri, for example, school officials announced students would not be returning full-time in the fall. Instead, they will be on-campus two days a week and online the other three. Many parents, especially those whose lives and careers have been greatly impacted by the COVID-induced school closures, are unhappy with this arrangement. Thus far, more than 800 people have signed a petition for the school to offer more in-person learning.

During these strange times, it is clearer than ever that a single school bureaucracy simply cannot meet the varied needs of every student and every family. Should a family with health challenges be left with no virtual option because most of their neighbors want to resume in-class schooling? Should a single mother be forced to choose between putting food on the table and educating her child if schools remain closed?  The obvious answer is a resounding No, but we wouldn’t be in this position if our public education system was set up to fund students instead of systems.

If we allowed people more control over where their educational dollars were spent, we could provide educational options to every family.

There are no easy decisions for school boards when making decisions that affect so many lives. Giving people educational options, however, is a no brainer.

The post COVID Makes it Clear – We Need Educational Options appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s not hard to understand why teachers are angry. In Missouri, the average teacher salary in 2000 was $51,100 (in 2016 dollars) and in 2016 it was $48,300. But the question is: Who should they be mad at? Can the folks in Jefferson City give raises to all Missouri teachers? They cannot. In most Missouri districts, school boards negotiate with the local teachers’ union to determine salary schedules. So somewhere along the line, even as spending per student increased from $8,900 to $10,500 (both in 2016 dollars), higher teacher salaries have gotten lost.

One important factor has been the growth in staff since 2000. Since that time Missouri’s public school enrollment had a net increase of  4,250 students, but public school staffing increased by 5,500 individuals, about half of whom were teachers. That’s right—there have been more adults hired to teach and run schools than there have been new students. I’ve written quite a bit about legacy costs (pensions and buildings) consuming more and more education dollars, but staffing increases are a huge driver of lower teacher salaries—the payroll money is being spread among more and more employees.

In 2015, the average pupil/teacher ratio in Missouri was about 14:1, and the average spent per student was $10,500. This means that about $150K was spent to run the average classroom. If I were a teacher and only about 30 percent of what was spent in my classroom went to my salary, I’d want to know where the rest went, and why. I’d also like the option to bump my class size up to 15 or 16 students if I were able to keep the increased funding.

I’m not second-guessing staffing decisions, but school districts have to make tradeoffs between hiring more staff or paying teachers more—and they seem to have chosen the former. If teachers don’t like that, they need to go to the actual decision makers—school boards and superintendents, maybe even those who represent them at the table–and demand something different. And if they’re paying dues to their local union to do their negotiating for them, they may want to consider how that’s working out for them.

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The post Who’s to Blame for Stagnant Teacher Salaries? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

To learn more check out School Choice For Me, But Not For Thee: Part 3.

The post Show-Me Now! School Choice = More Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Reservation Number 2: School choice gives the public less control of the school system.

Local control of public schools is as American as apple pie and baseball. In the vast majority of U.S. school districts, governance is of the people. Citizens in the local school district elect school board members. The citizens control the school system. Some worry that school choice would strip local taxpayers of this ability. Is this true? Just as is the case in considering finances, the simple answer is yes. In most school choice systems, whether public charter schools or private school choice programs, citizens do not have the ability to elect school board members. Here again, we must consider what this means.

Let’s first consider the current system where you and I can elect school board members. Say you are upset with something, or you want the curriculum changed (as I have in the past). What are your options? First, you can, and should, address the issue with the teacher. If this does not resolve the issue, you approach the principal and work your way up the chain of command—principal, assistant superintendent or district coordinator, superintendent, etc. Finally, you may approach the school board. When you bring your petition to the school board, it is not uncommon for them to grant you three minutes to speak at a public hearing. If you are lucky, they may take up the issue for further discussion.

Chances are you will not be very successful in getting the school district to change policy (So far I’m batting .000 on my complaints). If you are dedicated, and educated, enough, you may run for a position on the school board. You will have to hit the pavement and participate in local events to get up your name recognition. Let’s then say you get yourself elected to the board. Now, you have to convince a majority of the board members to vote your way on the issue.

How long has this process taken you? Probably years. And what have you gained? You have just managed to foist your will on the remainder of the students and parents in the school district, many of whom may disagree with you. As I have written elsewhere, our current system invites conflict because it is a winner takes all system.

While the current system puts the power into the hands of citizens, the average citizen actually possesses very little power to exact any meaningful change.

Now, let’s consider a school choice system. In charter and private schools, most boards are self-appointed and the board members may or may not be from your local community. Some schools may have parent advisory committees, but they often do not determine policy within the school. In this system, you lose your ability to elect board members; but you gain something else. You gain the ability to leave without having to move or pay for tuition. If the school isn’t meeting your needs, you can take your child to another school. This places tremendous pressure on the school to be attentive to your needs.

Right now, can you name all of the members of your local school board. No? OK, now name one or two great schools in or around your community that you would like your kids to go to. I’d wager more people could do the latter.

By switching to a school choice system, we lose control at the ballot box and gain control in the classroom. That seems like a good trade-off. 

The post School Choice for Me, but Not for Thee: Part 3 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What was farmland near the lake not long ago is now subdivisions teeming with young families.  Over the past 20 years, the Wentzville School District, where Lake St. Louis is located, has grown nearly 200 percent, adding an average of almost 500 students each year. That population growth is the talk of the town today, as it is going to require the school district to build at least one new school in the near future. In doing so, the school board will change the boundaries of the existing schools.  This process will likely uproot hundreds of children from schools they already attend and force them to go somewhere else.

Folks are not happy. Petitions are being circulated. Facebook posts are being shared. The community is in turmoil.

This drama is not unique to Lake St. Louis, to Missouri, or even to 2016. As the American educational system evolved and matured, small schools and small school districts consolidated into larger and larger political units, from more than 170,000 public school districts in 1949 to the 14,000 or so bodies that oversee K-12 education today. This has empowered a smaller and smaller number of school boards to make decisions like where to locate schools, where to demarcate attendance boundaries, with whom to contract for busing and food services, how to compensate teachers, and many, many other decisions. At every point in this journey, as you might imagine, there was controversy.

Still though, it is popular to offer paens to local control, irrespective of political orientation. When education reformers tried to amend the Missouri constitution to change how teachers are evaluated, the Missouri’s NEA affiliate’s headline screamed “local control of public schools takes a hit.” When the NEA’s Michigan affiliate wanted to praise the recent Every Student Succeeds Act, they said that it “puts students ahead of politics; educators ahead of politicians; and local control ahead of federal mandates.” Similarly, Sen. Ted Cruz’s website states that “education decisions should be made on the state and local level, where parents and communities can be more involved and find solutions better suited to their kids’ needs.”

De Tocqueville wrote long ago, “local assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of free nations.”  Unfortunately, our local institutions governing education have been weakening in recent decades.  On the other side of the Show-Me State, the recent school board elections in the Kansas City School District didn’t have a single name on the ballot. Only one candidate got the necessary number of signatures to run in the election and was thus automatically elected, and the three other seats had to be filled entirely by write-in candidates.  

To turn a phrase of left wing activists around, is this what democracy looks like? Or, more pointedly for conservatives, what does local control mean in education today? 

Local control is not simply a tyranny of the majority on a small scale. Local control, properly understood, means empowering families, those “little platoons” that another lover of local control, Edmund Burke, so valorized, to make the best educational decisions for their children. It means allowing local community organizations like nonprofits and churches to operate schools where students are free to use their state support to finance their education.  It means interpersonal networks within communities coming together to share information about what schools are doing, which ones are better than others, and where children might thrive.

In short, is has nothing to do with having a school board.

Local educational bureaucracies have unfortunately become 14,000 mini-monopolies. They routinely fight charter school or private school choice programs that would give families more choices as to where they send their children to school. In fact, the National Association of School Boards officially opposes private school choice and makes anti-voucher talking points available on its website.  As the University of Pennsylvania’s Marc Meredith has shown, they purposefully schedule elections to drive down turnout to make it easier to get their desired outcome.  Rather than represent the will of the people, they represent the needs of the bureaucracy.

The people of Lake St. Louis tax themselves to provide for a quality education for the children that live in their community. What if rather than being geographically assigned to schools, students were free to attend whatever school in the district they wanted to? What if they could take the funds levied for their education to schools in neighboring communities or to local private schools because they were the schools that best fit their needs? That would not be incompatible with the purpose of public education or the intent of their neighbors. In fact, it would more tightly align with what the children themselves, not the bureaucracy that has arisen over the years, actually want.

It is long past time that we, in the spirit of Confucius, rectify the name of local control. It does not have to be synonymous with monopoly.  It does not have to fight innovation.  What it needs to do is empower—and reflect the will of—citizens and families. That is the vision of de Tocqueville and Burke, and that is something worth pursuing.

The post Local Control in Education, Properly Understood appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But what we also should take into account (but almost never do) are the conditions of the labor market in which teachers work.  If you pay the same amount to a teacher in St. Louis that you do a teacher in Nodaway County, it’s very likely that you’ve underpaid the St. Louis teacher and overpaid the Nodaway County teacher, even though they got the same amount.  Let me explain why.

There are vast differences in the cost of living and average salaries of workers across the state. Take Shannon County for example. Located just south of the Mark Twain national forest, Shannon County is one of the poorest counties in the state (It also happens to be where my wife’s grandparents call home). The median household income in 2011 was roughly $20,000 less than the state average, at $25,684.  The average teacher in the county makes over $35,000, more than 135% of the median household income. On top of that, teachers receive a 14.5% match on retirement contributions and employer-paid health care. All of this for 180 days of work—that is, unless they use their 10 to 12 built-in sick/personal days. 

What would happen if we gave these teachers a raise? Would paying teachers an extra $2,000 or $3,000 and moving them to 140 or 150 percent of median household income attract new teachers or retain current teachers? That’s unlikely. They’re already far above their neighbors. What’s worse, it would strain the already limited stream of money that the district has to fund its schools. Small benefit, high cost, bad policy.

As I pointed out yesterday on the blog, teacher pay should reflect local economic markets.  The map at the top of this post shows the average salary of teachers in each Missouri county. The color indicates how the salary compares to the median household income of the county. An index can be thought of as a percentage, so in the counties shown in orange, teacher salaries range between 75% and 99% of median household income.  In many areas of the state with “low” teacher salaries, the wages are actually high compared to the median household income. 

Because of all of this, a statewide increase in teacher salaries (like the ones the MSTA calls for) would mean paying teachers in some areas of the state above what their local market demands.  It would push districts that are already financially strapped to take unpopular measures such as holding wages down for more senior teachers or increasing class sizes by hiring fewer teachers.

Today Missouri requires all school districts to start teachers at a salary of at least $25,000, and teachers with a master’s degree and 10 years of experience must earn at least $33,000. Increasing the minimum teacher salary to, say, $30,000 would have little effect on overall teacher pay.  According to a study by the Missouri State Teachers Association, the average starting teacher salary in Missouri is $33,012.

Still, many school districts—poor, rural districts—would be affected by an increase in the state-required minimum wage for teachers. Thus, this type of mandate would disproportionately affect those districts most strapped for cash. It would mean they could hire fewer teachers because they have less money to spend.

Increasing teacher salaries may be a noble goal, but the decision of whether to do so should be made by local school boards taking into account local conditions, not by politicians in Jefferson City.

The post Increasing Teacher Pay from On High Is Simply Bad Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Feinstein pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his use of a credit card to steal about $105,000 from the health foundation he was working for in the early 2000s, news and court records say. He lost the money gambling.

Feinstein served a 38-day sentence in an Iowa prison. He completed his four years of probation.

Allegedly, the WNEA found out about the felony conviction on March 30. On March 31, the union pulled support by issuing a letter to WNEA members (see below).

Apparently the group also removed posts about Feinstein from its Facebook page. However, the WNEA did not alert the public to the issue or to the fact that they dropped support. As voters drove to their polling places, they passed scores of WNEA-approved signs supporting Feinstein. Some claim WNEA representatives were even standing in front of polling places holding these signs.

The election of a convicted felon to the school board brings up many questions. Should Feinstein have disclosed this information sooner? Did the union do its due diligence in vetting the candidate and disclosing the information once they found out about the prior conviction?

While these are important questions, there are some much more basic questions about the role of public-sector unions in elections. To which, this election should sound an alarm.

First, as the Show-Me Institute’s Brittany Wagner has written before, teachers’ unions are a special interest group that can have significant sway in elections. Teachers’ unions may be the sole special interest group active in local school district elections. The Wentzville School District has more than 1,800 employees, roughly half of which are certified teachers. Even in a relatively large district such as Wentzville, this can be more than enough to sway the vote when, as in Tuesday’s election, only a fraction of registered voters bothered to vote. The two candidates endorsed by the WNEA were victorious in the election and received almost the same number of votes. This fact leads to another question: Should we be concerned that when the union sits down to bargain with the school district, there are school board members whom the WNEA helped elect?

Second, dues-paying union members have no say in which political causes their dues support. Would most WNEA members have wanted any portion of their dues to be used to support Feinstein? This election, however, would probably just a drop in the bucket. Teachers’ unions are among the largest political contributors in the country.

This incident illustrates why Missouri should reconsider how we elect school board members and how those members interact with any unions in their districts. For example, should school board elections be in November where turnout is greater? Should collective bargaining negotiations be open to the public, not behind closed doors? Should public-sector unions have to make annual financial filings, just like private-sector unions, so their members and the public can know where union political support is going? Finally, shouldn’t teachers who want to be in the union for professional development and liability insurance purposes have the option before paying any dues to limit their payments to fund only those activities and not the union’s political activity?

These types of reforms may not prevent the election of convicted felons, but they would go a long way to ensuring taxpayers have a seat at the table when it comes to their local schools.

The post Election of Convicted Felon to Wentzville School Board Should Sound Alarm appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

April also means school board elections. It would be nice to think that this annual rite of spring would renew and refresh our public schools in the same way that nature restocks our streams and repaints our forest, but this isn’t the case. To proponents of school reform, April really is the cruelest month.

Rather than healthy change and renewal, school board elections will come and go with minimal disturbance to the education establishment in school districts across the state. The system, as it is now, invites apathy and increased union control, perpetuating long-standing problems.

For starters, voter turnout in school board elections is extremely low. In Greene County, for example, only 12 percent of eligible voters made it to the polls in 2013, despite multiple school districts holding elections.

Additionally, parents and taxpayers know very little about the candidates.

While a candidate’s occupation, age, and education may be available—information regarding a candidate’s stance on key education issues is harder to acquire.

With so few people paying attention and so little information disseminated, special interest groups—such as teachers’ unions—can have a disproportionate impact on these elections. While it’s unclear how large a role special interest groups have played in Missouri public school board elections, the danger is that unions are taking bites out of both sides of the apple—campaigning for candidates, then negotiating with union-friendly board members during closed sessions.

Historically, Missouri opted for a system aimed at keeping partisan politics out of school board elections, choosing a month to hold elections in which voters would not be burdened by having to make other electoral choices.

Fifty years ago, this way of thinking may have made some sense, but it makes no sense today. It is time for a complete overhaul of a badly antiquated system.

Here are three suggested reforms.

First, Missouri should move school board elections to coincide with other local, state, and national elections. Scheduling elections in November would assure far greater voter participation. In comparison to April, turnout in the 2012 general election in Greene County was 64 percent.

Second, Missouri should close the loophole in our Sunshine Law that allows school board members to negotiate with teachers’ unions in closed sessions. Taxpayers have a right to know what demands unions are making.

Third, public officials should push for the dissemination of more information during school board elections. Candidates should be encouraged to state their positions on important issues.

Missouri’s system of local public school control is precious, but to ensure that the interests of taxpayers and students are protected, it requires not just reform, but rebirth.

Brittany Wagner is a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Spring into Action on School Board Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Should Missouri pursue similar reform?

Collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) are subject to Missouri’s Sunshine Law. Many existing agreements can be viewed on Show-Me Sunshine. Here are just a few of the hundreds of items teachers and school boards have bargained for:

• Salary
• Benefits
• Sick days
• Student behavior
• Parent communication
• Amount of time a parent may spend in the classroom
• Paid release days for union activity
• Hiring policies

Parents may not be aware of the restrictiveness of some of these contracts. A study by USC Associate Professor Katharine Strunk found that in school districts with more union power school boards had less flexibility in decision making. This is unnerving, as school board members are elected by citizens; teachers’ unions are not.

Perhaps if Missouri’s Sunshine Law was expanded to include collective negotiations, school boards would be less likely to give in to cumbersome demands in the presence of taxpayers and parents. In the absence of a collaborative policy, this would bring parents and taxpayers a step closer to having a place at the bargaining table.

The post Veil Lifted from Teacher Collective Bargaining Negotiations in Colorado appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The graphic below represents how teachers’ unions influence local school districts.

The first path of influence is through national and state political activity. At both levels, teachers’ unions make contributions to candidates that are likely to represent their platforms. The NEA, for example, takes strong positions on national education issues such as Common Core and school choice.

Unions also back issues at the state level—the Missouri NEA is reported to have donated $20,000 to campaign against Amendment 3, an initiative to end teacher tenure in Missouri, while it’s PAC, the Committee in Support of Public Educators, raised almost $90,000. Although there is money spent on the opposite side, monetary contributions are not the only way teachers’ unions influence policy.

Involvement in school board elections is the second route of influence. In Missouri, teachers’ unions have the right to collectively bargain with school administrations. These agreements include a range of items such as workplace rules, teachers’ compensation, and personnel decisions. According to union guru Myron Lieberman, collective bargaining was initially seen as a check on the power of school boards, who are democratically elected by residents within a school district.

However, a study by Stanford Political Scientist Terry Moe showed that within the 253 school districts examined unions supported school board candidates in 92 percent of the districts,”made phone calls in 97 percent, campaigned door-to-door in 68 percent, and provided mailings and publicity in 94 percent.”

If Moe’s study holds true in Missouri, then teachers’ unions have influenced school board elections, helping to elect candidates with similar views—nine Missouri school boards have passed resolutions against Amendment 3.

Through these two paths, the teachers’ union cycle perpetually strengthens itself. By limiting the power of parents, influencing the hand of local school district officials, and mobilizing state and national efforts to keep the status quo, the teachers’ union is able to protect the people the system was designed to serve—teachers.

Protecting the interests of teachers is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that within the teachers’ union cycle the interests of teachers often outweigh the needs of students.

The post The Teachers’ Union Cycle appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a recent position paper by the Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis, area school superintendents stated, “If transfers are made between school districts then a regional tuition rate should be determined.” The interesting thing is that nothing is stopping area school districts from charging a lower tuition rate now. Each district, with a vote of its school board, could decide to set a lower, consistent tuition rate. To date, none of them have. Instead, school leaders are asking for more state government action.

This is the very problem that plagues our society in so many regards; instead of taking initiative and fixing a problem ourselves, we allow or we seek greater government involvement.

The next time you hear a school leader complain about the transfer situation and how it may bankrupt unaccredited schools, ask him or her what his or her district is doing to help. Are these leaders taking action locally, or are they requesting a solution from Jefferson City?

The post A Lower, Consistent Tuition For School Transfers Is Possible Without The Legislature appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Carroll’s term would have ended April 2014. According to Missouri statute (RSMo 162.492.7), “Vacancies which occur on the school board… shall be filled by special election if such vacancy happens more than six months prior to the time of holding an election…” Carroll’s resignation was accepted on Sept. 25 with more than six months remaining. (In fact, it was tendered much earlier and appeared online Sept. 7.) It took an additional two weeks for Board Chairman Airick West to notify state authorities per state law, finally doing so on Oct. 11. On Oct. 22, the Missouri State Board of Education approved a special election to fill the vacancy.

In a Nov. 1 letter to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), KCMSD attorney Ray Sousley attempted to explain the confusion:

The last day for a candidate to be qualified to be on the November, 2013 ballot was August 27, 2013, and the ballot had to be certified on August 29, 2013. Because those dates had been missed when the verbal resignation was given, I think there was a misconception by the Board that we would not need to hold an election…

He continues by saying the district wants to avoid a costly election. But DESE doesn’t buy any of it. On Nov. 18, DESE certified the election in accordance with state law — a special election is to be held.

What about Sousley’s statement that the school board didn’t understand a special election was necessary? It is empirically untrue. The podcast of the Sept. 25 meeting includes the following discussion about Carroll’s resignation and replacement:

Board Member Marisol Montero: “So after–if it gets accepted, which I’m sure it will, the letter goes to the school board of education and then from there are we having a special election to replace the term that Ms. Carroll has left, six months?”
Board Chairman Airick West: “That is up to the determination of the state board as to the statute. We’ll accept this and send them a letter. If they determine that is within the parameters of state statute… they will make the determination.”

The Board knew exactly what was required, but they dragged their feet to avoid following state law. Now they think they can just re-vote and avoid a special election altogether. But not everyone will go along. Montero voted ‘no’ on Dec. 18 to this proposed do-over, expressing concern about the possibility of violating state law.

The KCMSD is one of the wealthiest in Missouri. It is ambitious, wanting to expand into pre-kindergarten care. But it also is failing to improve meaningful academic standards for accreditation and, apparently, struggling with managing the day-to-day legal requirements of the board.

The post Kansas City School Board Member Resigns … Twice? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Nov. 9, the Washington Missourian published a letter to the editor in which I wrote that the Missouri School Boards’ Association (MSBA) uses your tax dollars to fight for keeping your taxes high.

Well, as you might expect, MSBA took issue with my letter. The funny thing is the part of the letter with which they took issue.

Was it my claim that MSBA is gearing up to battle against tax cuts in the next legislative session? No.

Was it my claim that they are hosting a series of anti-tax cut meetings? No.

Was it my claim that they hadn’t invited anyone who is pro-tax cuts to the meetings or that they are not interested in a debate on the issue? No again.

Was it my statement that our tax dollars go to MSBA to fund their efforts to keep our taxes high? Sadly, no.

Carter Ward, executive director of MSBA, took issue with my claim that I would have had to join MSBA if I had been elected to the school board. He wrote, “The decision to join MSBA is made by local boards of education as a whole and is voluntary. No school board in the state is required to belong to MSBA or to spend any money with the association.” Of course, state statute requires every school board member to undergo training that only the MSBA can provide, but never mind that.

He went on to claim that Missouri is a low-tax state and cutting our taxes further would be a “recipe for disaster.”

There you have it, MSBA thinks your taxes are low enough and they will fight to keep it that way.

The post MSBA Verifies That They Are Fighting To Keep Taxes High appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That is the argument of the Gordon Parks School Board and Doug Thaman, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association. In a recent Missouri Times article Thaman said:

Our concern is that this action overstepped authority. It’s the responsibility of the sponsor of the school to make a decision whether it’s renewed or closed. There was no indication to University of Central Missouri about the closing or information that they weren’t conducting evaluations correctly.

You see, in Missouri, colleges and universities sponsor charter schools. It is up to these institutions to evaluate their charter schools and to revoke their sponsorship if they are not performing or improving.

I certainly don’t believe low-performing schools should remain open. (For the record, there are five traditional public schools in the Kansas City District that performed lower than Gordon Parks in communication arts and nine that performed lower in math.) However, that decision is best decided by the school’s sponsor and by the individual choices of parents and students, not bureaucrats in Jefferson City. After all, it is the parents, students, and the school sponsor who benefit or are hurt due to the school’s performance. Therefore, it is the parents and the sponsor who should have the final say in closing the school.

The courts likely will settle this case; still, the damage to Gordon Parks is most likely done. Many of the students and staff have already left. The court decision, however, could set an important precedent for charter schools in Missouri. It would either give greater authority to the state to close charter schools or reserve that right for the charter school’s sponsor. I hope it’s the latter.

The post Save Gordon Parks Elementary School appeared first on Show-Me Institute.