A recent study in Education Next by Daniel Hamlin and Paul Peterson of Harvard University shows that Missouri’s state assessments have gotten easier. In fact, Missouri was the only state in the nation to decrease the difficulty of state assessments from 2009 to 2017. As recently as 2009, Missouri’s state tests were given a grade of “A” by the publication and were ranked second in the nation, behind only Massachusetts. This meant we set a high bar for achieving proficiency. Since then, we’ve dramatically lowered our standards. Missouri’s assessments now receive a letter grade of “C” and rank us 48^th in the nation.

 Keep in mind that test scores are a significant component of the score a school district receives on the state’s Annual Performance Report (APR). Normandy has made substantial improvement on the APR. The district scored just 7.1% in 2014. When the state board voted to reaccredit the district, the APR score was 62.5%. That score was just barely above the 60% threshold for provisional accreditation and was the district’s first year scoring in that range. At the time, 8.7 percent of the district’s 8th-graders scored proficient or advanced on the state’s easier assessment.

We shouldn’t dismiss the progress the Normandy Schools Collaborative has made. Under the steady leadership of Superintendent Charles Pearson and the oversight of the state, the district is clearly heading in the right direction. The question is whether the state’s easier assessments may have given the school district the extra 2.5 percentage points on the APR that put the district into the provisional accreditation range. More importantly, would the state board of education still have voted to reaccredit the school district if the members had known some portion of the district’s academic gains were illusory?

We won’t know the answer to that question for some time. Right now, the state board does not have a quorum as the five members who voted to fire the commissioner have been withdrawn. This means the board can take no action on this or any other issue. It also means that students in Normandy and other provisionally accredited school districts will be required to return to their home school districts next year. Students who transferred to Clayton, Kirkwood, and other high-performing school districts will be forced to go back to the schools they sought to escape. 

When the vacant state board seats are finally filled and the board reconvenes, they will have a lot of work to catch up on—including hiring a new education commissioner—so it will be easy for the members to overlook the situation in Normandy. That would be an injustice to the students there. At the very least, the board should thoroughly investigate the extent to which easier tests cost them the opportunity for a better education.

The post Did Easier Tests Cost Normandy Students the Right to Transfer? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

 This may be good news for the school district, but it could be bad news for students who have transferred out of the district over the past several years. According to Missouri law, unaccredited districts must pay for students’ tuition and transportation costs if they choose to transfer to a neighboring school district or charter school. Currently, 436 students from the Riverview Gardens district attend school outside of it. Now that the district is accredited, those students have lost the right to transfer at taxpayers’ expense to another public school district.

 Participating school districts are working on an agreement to allow students to continue in their current schools after parents voiced concerns about disrupting their children’s education. According to assistant education commissioner Chris Neale, transferring students will be allowed to finish out at least this school year in their current school. Some students may be allowed to stay in their current schools until a “natural stopping point”—at the end of elementary or middle school for example—but no new students will be allowed to participate and Riverview Gardens will not provide transportation after June 2017.

 Based on the scores below, it is easy to see why parents do not want to put their children back in the Riverview Gardens school system:

While test performance is not the only factor in the APR score—graduation rate, attendance rate, and college and career readiness are other factors—it is troublesome that a district with such low scores could become fully accredited as early as next year if they keep their APR score above 70%. To the school district’s credit, Riverview Gardens is working diligently to improve performance after years of academic and fiscal mismanagement. While these gains represent progress, the district still has fewer than 15% of students scoring proficient in Math and Science for the 2016 school year. Is it in the best interest of any child to be forced to attend a school with this kind of track record?

With such a low performance threshold, Missouri’s accreditation system and transfer law create a trap for students in districts just barely performing above the threshold—the schools perform too well for the students to be allowed to leave, but not well enough to prepare the students for work or college.

Missouri families deserve to make their own educational choices and shouldn’t be bound by fluctuating quality measures of the districts where they live. For the students in Riverview Gardens, continuing the current transfer program would help them in the short term. In addition, revising Missouri charter school laws and establishing tax credit scholarship programs or education savings accounts that are available to all students would help every child get the education that best fits their needs.

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We asked Shaunna Matthews that question and her answer was clear:

The opportunities that we are getting out of this program are awesome. We would be wrong to deny any kid this opportunity.

Last year, Shaunna’s daughter, Angel, transferred from the unaccredited Riverview Gardens School District, to the high performing Kirkwood School District.

Here is Angel’s Story.

The post Angel’s Story: What the Transfer Program Is All About appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Wednesday, Elisa Crouch and Jessica Bock of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Francis Howell will allow transfer students from the Normandy School District to return. That is, if those students take legal action and force the school district to comply with the law.

The Francis Howell School District will continue to require court orders for students from Normandy who want to transfer, said Jennifer Henry, district spokeswoman. The district sent a letter today to parents to inform them that it was possible 350 students could be returning, but that it was unclear how many would take legal action. 

So far, 17 transfer students have returned to Francis Howell through court orders. 

Henry said district leaders continue to believe that the transfer situation depletes the resources for the larger student population who remain in the school district.

The district claims it is not accepting all of the students, as other school districts have done, because they are concerned about draining resources from the unaccredited Normandy School District. This is simply taking a faux moral high ground.

Francis Howell is a great district. They have great teachers, administrators, resources, and students. Because of the large size of the district, roughly 17,000 students, it easily can accommodate an influx of 350 to 400 students in need of better educational opportunities. And, as we just found out, student achievement in the district was not negatively impacted by the influx of Normandy students.

If Francis Howell really wanted to take the high ground, they would open their doors to students desperate for a quality education and they would lower their tuition rate. Even with a lower tuition rate, the district could still see a financial windfall. If they did that, they would be showing true compassion for the students who want to transfer and the students who do not.

Forcing students to sue in order to obtain their spot that they are promised by state law in order to save Normandy money is not charitable, it is poor form and simply bad policy.

The post Charity Is Not Your Strong Suit, Francis Howell appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Young families hunting for a house often use standardized test rankings as a tool to select a neighborhood. This is highly evident in the Lindbergh School District, where, aside from its relatively low tax rates and housing turnover, the district’s rising enrollment has been attributed to its top-ranking achievement record.

Data released from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) reveals the (receiving district MAP score) concerns were unfounded. In fact, receiving school districts saw little to no decrease in test scores in comparison to the previous year without transfer students. An analysis by St. Louis Public Radio shows that transfer students had no effect on the Annual Performance Report (APR) of many receiving districts.

Some districts did see a change in APR score, and this could be explained by a number of variables. For instance, the state itself saw a decline in scores overall. Also, standardized test scores are strongly correlated to the socio-economic makeup of a district. This may explain why Ferguson-Florissant, a low-income receiving district, saw the most decline—3.6 percentage points.

The transfer of 2,200 students did not cause the sky to fall—or scores for that matter. What it did was give students an educational opportunity. For the receiving district that has chosen not to accept transfer students, this should be a sign that it’s time to take those 350 children back.

Transfer students may not have made a difference on receiving districts’ APR scores, but the receiving districts certainly made a difference on transfer students.

The post The Score Is Falling! The Score Is Falling!-Or Not appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Schindler has represented several of these students in court. Earlier this month, Judge Michael Burton ordered several school districts to accept transfer students from the unaccredited Normandy school district. Because of the number of students involved and the favorable court decision, Schindler is now pursuing a class action suit on behalf of these transfer students.

The post Transferring from Normandy: An interview with lawyer Joshua Schindler appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Show-Me Now! Let Transfer Students Return appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some Normandy residents complained that the transfer law made it possible to move into the district and transfer without having attended a Normandy school. Now, some parents are talking about moving just to avoid the non-accredited district.

Cotton said her children won’t be returning to Normandy. “I’ll move out of the district,” Cotton said. Cotton, like so many Normandy parents, said she will do anything to ensure her kids have access to a quality education.

When Cotton and I first met, she was hopeful that all three of her children would be able to return to Francis Howell. She smiled as she spoke about what the district had done for her kids. Watch the Show-Me Institute video below to find out her reaction to Francis Howell’s decision to turn away transfer students.

The post The Francis Howell Transfer Decision: One Family’s Disappointment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is always risky when you make predictions; but aside from the time I bet against the Harlem Globetrotters, I’m doing pretty well. I previously predicted that 2013 would be a banner year for charter schools, and it was. In a December 2013 post titled, “How Choice Changes The Transfer Dynamic in Kansas City,” I predicted that the inter-district transfer law would have less of an effect in Kansas City than it has in the Normandy and Riverview Gardens School Districts in Saint Louis. I wrote:

The existing prevalence of school choice in Kansas City will most likely make the impact of student transfers minimal in comparison to the experiences at Normandy and Riverview Gardens. If school leaders in Kansas City and the surrounding areas handle the situation well, this expansion of school choice could actually benefit the districts and the students.

To date, only 23 children have applied to transfer from the unaccredited Kansas City Public School District to an accredited district. Does this mean that the students don’t want school choice? Not really.

In many ways, charter schools in Kansas City have acted as a release valve. They have provided families with another option and made the prospect of riding a bus or driving to neighboring districts less appealing.

If we think about it another way, the low transfer number demonstrates the positive impact of charter schools. The nearly 10,000 students in Kansas City charter schools would rather stay in those schools than transfer to the Independence, Raytown, Hickman Mills, or other surrounding school districts. It is amazing what can happen when individuals are free to choose, rather than being compelled to send their children to a school that isn’t meeting their needs.

The post Few Students Transfer From Kansas City Public Schools – Thanks To Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the full testimony: .

The post Fix Transfers, Expand Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The recent Missouri Supreme Court decision, which upheld the state’s inter-district school transfer law, has many in Kansas City on the edge of their seats. They have watched the events unfold in Saint Louis, where the two unaccredited districts, Normandy and Riverview Gardens, have already begun allowing students to transfer. Some are worried the law will bankrupt the Kansas City School District as it may do in the two Saint Louis districts. There is, however, good reason to believe student transfers may impact Kansas City much differently than it has Normandy and Riverview Gardens. That reason is school choice.

Students in Normandy and Riverview Gardens do not have access to charter schools or magnet schools. Until they were allowed to transfer, the only options they had were to move or to pay for private schools. In Kansas City, however, there are charter schools and magnet schools. In fact, more than a third of all public school students are already in a charter school (9,692 in 2013). Because so many Kansas City students are already in schools of choice, it seems unlikely that the percentage of students transferring will be as high as the 25 percent in Normandy and Riverview Gardens.

Nevertheless, the district may actually be better off if charter students decide to transfer. As I have written before, Kansas City spends more than most of the surrounding districts and could come out on top financially. Currently, charter school funds follow the child to his or her school through the district — to the tune of $12,482 per pupil. The average per-pupil expenditure in the 11 nearby districts highlighted in my last post is just $10,075, a difference of $2,407. That is $2,407 per student that the district could pocket, less transportation costs, if a charter student decides to transfer.

The existing prevalence of school choice in Kansas City will most likely make the impact of student transfers minimal in comparison to the experiences at Normandy and Riverview Gardens. If school leaders in Kansas City and the surrounding areas handle the situation well, this expansion of school choice could actually benefit the districts and the students.

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