MOScholars is Missouri’s education savings account (ESA) program. It provides scholarships to eligible families to use on a variety of educational expenses: tuition, tutoring, lessons, and more. The decision by Hallsville and Atlanta to join the program is noteworthy because MOScholars is viewed primarily as a vehicle for private school tuition. Their participation is a reminder that these scholarships can also enable nonresident students to attend public schools outside of their assigned districts.

The move is significant for two reasons. First, it signals a willingness among public schools to compete for students within a choice-driven landscape. Contrary to the notion that public schools wilt under competition, districts like Hallsville and Atlanta are demonstrating initiative. As Patrick Wolf, Distinguished Professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, explains, “this idea that public schools are a fragile ecosystem, and they can only serve students if they have no competition . . . that claim has been completely debunked.”

Second, the move effectively serves as a workaround to Missouri’s lack of statewide interdistrict open enrollment. Students in Missouri typically cannot attend a public school outside their residential district. By participating in MOScholars, Hallsville and Atlanta are using the program to facilitate student transfers across district lines, with the scholarship serving as the funding mechanism rather than state formula dollars.

Given the limited size and scope of the MOScholars program as currently funded, it is unlikely that there will be significant enrollment shifts in these districts due to their participation. Still, their decision points to underlying demand for more school choice and is another step toward a more flexible and responsive public education system in Missouri.

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Dr. James V. Shuls will serve as Director of Research and a Senior Fellow and Elias Tsapelas as Director of State Budget and Fiscal Policy

 St. Louis, MO – Dr. James V. Shuls has been named the new director of research and senior fellow and Elias Tsapelas the director of state budget and fiscal policy at the Show-Me Institute. Previously, Dr. Shuls held the title of distinguished fellow of education policy at the Institute and Tsapelas was a senior analyst.

“I am honored to serve the Institute in this new role,” Shuls said. “While the opportunity to focus on policy areas beyond education is new to me, the goal remains the same—to provide high-quality research that helps promote free markets and individual liberty for all Missourians.”

“Research is at the center of everything we do at the institute,” Show-Me Institute CEO Brenda Talent said. “James and Elias bring knowledge and experience to their respective roles that will be invaluable as we continue to address the challenges facing our state.”

James V. Shuls is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He earned his Ph.D. in education policy from the University of Arkansas. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Missouri Southern State University and a master’s degree from Missouri State University, both in elementary education. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, James taught first grade and fifth grade in southwest Missouri.

Elias Tsapelas earned his master of arts degree in economics from the University of Missouri in 2016. Before joining the Institute he worked for the State of Missouri’s Department of Economic Development and Office of Administration, Division of Budget & Planning.

Dr. Susan Pendergrass, who previously served as director of research, has returned to the role of director of education policy in order to focus on education research.

Tsapelas is the institute’s first director of state budget and fiscal policy.

Media Contact: Zach Lawhorn

Zach.Lawhorn@ShowMeOpportunity.org

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A policeman sees a man looking for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. He says he lost his keys and the policeman decides to lend a hand looking for them. After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them there, and the man replies, no, he lost them on the other side of the street. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the man replies, “well, this is where the light is.”

When education researchers want to measure the impact of a policy or program, they are forced to look where the light is. That usually means looking at student test scores, graduation rates, and a set of relatively limited short-term indicators.

Fortunately, school-choice researchers are starting to look at outcomes beyond just test scores, casting light into areas that were previously shrouded in darkness.

In fact, not only does new research show that school choice can boost test scores and increase the likelihood that low-income students finish college, but studies also suggest that students in school choice programs are less likely than their traditional school peers to commit crimes.

Researchers studying the high-performing Promise Academy in the Harlem Children’s Zone found promising results for students at that school, which uses a lottery system to place students in the limited number of available spots. Four percent of lottery “losers” were incarcerated compared to none of the lottery “winners.” In addition, charter school students were 17 percentage points more likely to enroll in college immediately after high school, and female lottery winners were 10.1 percentage points less likely to report having been pregnant as a teenager than lottery losers.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina used a lottery system to place students into schools that have a limited number of available seats. A study by David J. Deming at Harvard University shows that high school students who “won” the lottery and were placed into their first-choice school were arrested 70 percent less for drug charges and 45 percent less for other felony charges compared to students who entered the lottery but did not secure a spot in their first-choice school.

Schools that use lottery systems for admission are especially helpful for comparison studies because they allow researchers to compare two groups of students who both showed a desire to attend a school of their choosing. But even in situations where there is no lottery, researchers can use other techniques to help ensure the validity of their findings.

For example, researchers from the University of Arkansas found the following reduction in crime rates for male students, relative to incidence rates for their age among the general population: 79 percent for felony crimes, 93 for drug related crimes, and 87 percent for thefts. Because private school enrollment through a voucher program is not capped in Milwaukee, researchers couldn’t sort students into lottery-winner and lottery-loser groups. Instead they “used comparison groups constructed through an algorithm that matched [voucher] students with Milwaukee Public School (MPS) students based on grade, neighborhood, race, gender, English language learner (ELL) status and math and reading test scores” (see page 6 of the study).

These studies are encouraging, and suggest that school choice can not only enrich the lives of students, but also help make our cities and communities safer. No wonder school choice is becoming more popular.

The post Studies Show Benefits of School Choice Extend Beyond the Classroom appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, there is a terrible myth going around about teachers. This myth is pervasive and has been around for decades. It is the belief that teachers are badly underpaid.

Jay Greene, Distinguished Professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas, wrote about it in his influential 2005 book, “Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools and Why It Isn’t So.” Greene argued that when we compare a teacher’s hourly rate to those of other professionals, the pay is quite comparable. He also noted that we must consider other employment benefits, such as health care and retirement, which are typically more generous in education than the private sector.

Despite these arguments, the myth of grossly underpaid teachers has persisted. Recently, an Education Next poll asked respondents if they thought teacher pay should increase, decrease, or stay the same. Overwhelmingly, respondents said we should “increase” (47%) or “greatly increase” (14%) teacher pay. That in and of itself isn’t telling; if it were feasible, most of us would happily pay teachers more. The telling part is what happens when survey participants are given actual teacher salaries. When people are told how much teachers are paid, support for pay raises drops.

Most people greatly underestimate how much teaches actually paid. In the survey, the average guess for the national average teacher salary was $40,587. That is $17,672 less than the actual average of $58,258. It is also less than the average here in Missouri, where the average total teacher salary in 2016 was $49,060. In Saint Louis City and County, the average climbs to $58,701 (author calculations).

 About two years ago I had to battle this teacher pay myth in my own home. My son came home from school saying teachers didn’t make very much money, at least that’s what his teacher said. I said, “I bet she makes more than me.” So, we looked it up (both of our salaries are public information). As it turns out, his teacher made several thousand more than I do.

The problem with the teacher pay myth is that it undermines a very noble and valuable profession. As Harvard education professor, Marty West suggests, “To the extent that the public has a falsely low impression of [how] much teachers earn, that only makes it harder for us to attract talented individuals into the teaching profession.”

 If we keep perpetuating the notion that teaching is a thankless job and teachers are underpaid, we shouldn’t be surprised when we have teacher shortages. Instead, let’s be honest—teaching is a great profession and the pay isn’t bad!

The post Teachers Are Great, and the Pay Isn’t Bad! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On average, charter schools improve test scores in English Language Arts and Mathematics at a higher rate than comparable traditional public schools. There is variation, though. Notably, the authors of the report found charter schools that belong to a network, (known as a charter management organization, or CMO), tend to perform higher than independent charter schools.  Missouri’s charter schools didn’t fit this trend, as non-CMO schools performed relatively well. Nevertheless, the findings of this report have some important implications for Missouri.

Currently, there are relatively few large, successful charter management organizations operating in our state. There are a few reasons why this is so: 

Limited Locations

For many years, charter schools could only open in Saint Louis and Kansas City.  For a network of schools to thrive, it needs to be able to enroll a large number of students. The limited markets of Saint Louis and Kansas City make it difficult for this to happen.

Limited Enrollments

Charter schools can now operate in unaccredited school districts, but they still face problems with enrollment. Missouri’s charter school law does not allow students to enroll in charter schools across district boundaries, and Missouri has relatively small school districts. A charter must attract a large percentage of students in a small school district in order to be viable. This has prevented charters from opening in the perennially struggling school districts of Normandy and Riverview Gardens, as well as other places. 

Making it easier for charters to open statewide and allowing them to recruit students from across district boundaries might entice more charter operators to open schools in other districts or on the borders of Saint Louis and Kansas City. Current law makes it difficult for charters to operate outside of the two cities.

Pension Barriers

An added difficulty is Missouri’s teacher pension system. Currently, there are three separate systems which do not have reciprocity between them, meaning that years of service do not carry from one system to another. Charter networks may wish to move teachers or administrators between schools, but if this means moving between pension systems, those individuals would lose money.

Funding Parity

Charters in Missouri do not receive local tax support for facilities and debt. An analysis by researchers at the University of Arkansas shows that charters in Missouri receive approximately 26 percent less funding that their district counterparts. This is a difference of more than $4,600 per pupil. Many states are trying to attract high quality CMOs and can offer them more support than Missouri can.

If Missouri wants to improve educational outcomes for students, the legislature should enact polices that make the Show-Me State more attractive to CMOs. For starters, the legislature could address the problems listed here by removing geographic limitations, opening enrollment policies, reforming pension policy, and improving funding parity. 

The post We Need to Make Missouri More Attractive to Charter Management Organizations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This admonition is often forgotten in the world of education reform, where advocates wade hip-deep into the trenches of political warfare, researchers build staffs that require ever more philanthropic dollars, and writers make the TED talk circuit. Saying “I was wrong” can be seen as suicidal.

But it doesn’t even have to go that far. Policy ideas like charter schools, teacher evaluation, and high standards first exist in the abstract. When they are actually implemented, they look quite different from state to state or district to district. What one state calls “charter schooling” might look different from charter schooling in another state. So, if charter schools struggle in one state, it isn’t necessarily an indictment of the idea a whole. It might just be that the implementation didn’t match the specific environment where it was tried. In an ideal world, we’d learn from that, and do better.

But we don’t. When a new study comes out that says a policy has “failed,” we man the ramparts. Opponents (who were against the policy before any data was available) come out and tut-tut at advocates, telling them to “follow the data” or not to “cling to ideology.” Advocates circle the wagons. They spin the findings or pettifog the implications. They counter with personal stories or impugn the motives of critics. Rinse and repeat. (By the way, much of this is covered much more in depth than I can manage here in Rick Hess’s great new volume Letters to a Young Education Reformer).

Now I’m not naïve. Part of this is the way of the world. We live in a dynamic, diverse, pluralistic, democratic republic; the politics that define us, as the old saying goes, ain’t beanbag.  I’m hard pressed to advise one group or another to unilaterally disarm and allow people who aren’t dealing in good faith to seize the high ground. Still, if we want to be better, we’ve got to do better.

For our part, Jay Greene (head of the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform) and I are co-hosting a conference in Kansas City on May 22 where top education researchers are going to talk about failure. We have recruited a rock-star set of presenters who will discuss papers that are slated for publication in the near future by Rowman and Littlefield as an edited volume. Local education figures will serve as discussants, preventing any conversation from being too theoretical.

Authors will tackle many of the major topics of education policy of the last quarter century: Test-based teacher evaluation, technology in classrooms, teacher Preparation, No Child Left Behind, and more.  But rather than trying to make some kind of global statement about whether or not something like evaluating teachers based on performance or having the federal government intervene in low-performing schools is a “success” or “failure,” authors will dig into specific examples, what went wrong, and most importantly, what we can learn from it.

Anyone who has spent more than a day in front a classroom knows that failure is an essential part of learning. You’ve got to let a student get a math problem wrong so they can learn how to avoid that mistake in the future. You wouldn’t tell her that she should never try and solve for a missing side of a triangle using the Pythagorean Theorem. You’d help her figure out how she applied it incorrectly, or if it was a right triangle in the first place. That’s how children get better. It’s how adults get better too.

We have to be humble. We are going to get stuff wrong. The more honest we can be about that, and the sooner we can admit we made a mistake, learn from it, and fail better, the better our overall system will be.

The post Who Wants to Talk About Failure? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Since then, we have continued to advocate for these policies.  Though we have had some small successes, the policies of today are very similar to the policies of 2011. Charter schools are still very limited and still confined to Saint Louis and Kansas City, we do not have a private school choice program, and students have relatively few options. But support for choice is growing.  We regularly hear wonderful stories of students thriving in charter schools or benefitting from inter-district choice. And we are starting to see other voices advocating for broader school choice policies.

For example, Steve Spellman, a financial services professional, recently penned an op-ed that appeared in the Columbia Missourian.  In his piece, Spellman spoke about how parents will often move or illegally change their address so their children can attend the public school of their choice.  He argued for many of the same policies that McShane and I wrote about back in 2011 and 2012. It is exciting to see Spellman and others picking up the mantle of school choice.    

Last year a school choice bill made it further than ever—passing out of the Missouri House—and received a hearing in the Senate.  I suspect support for school choice will continue to grow in the coming years. As one of our professors from the University of Arkansas, Jay Greene, recently wrote, “the great political virtue of school choice is that it generates its own constituents…” When people have school choice, they want to keep it. We aren't there yet, but the drumbeat for increased educational options is getting louder.

The post Do You Hear That? It’s the Drumbeat for School Choice Getting Louder appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Recently, Missouri lawmakers have sought to improve charter school access to school buildings by inserting a provision into a bill that would require school districts to convey unused school buildings to charter schools for a fair-market-value price. This suggestion was immediately scoffed at by the districts, who said they already sell buildings to charter schools.

Today, there are 26 different charter schools in Saint Louis (although some may share a building). Yet, only a few have purchased a building from SLPS. Gateway Science Academies, for example, purchased the Gardenville school. Of course, Gateway had to counter three times and ended up paying asking price, but SLPS did sell the building.

According to records obtained by a Show-Me Institute summer intern, SLPS has 35 empty school buildings, 22 of which are listed for sale. (Look for more on empty school buildings in an upcoming Show-Me Institute essay.)

It is true that in recent years St. Louis Public School officials have eased their opposition to selling school buildings to charter schools. Of course, they had an official policy that forbade the sale of properties to charter schools.

It is clear that charter schools are here to stay. The charter sector has been growing since its inception, and now 29 percent of all public school students in Saint Louis attend charter schools. Allowing public school buildings to remain vacant by making it onerous for charter schools to obtain facilities, while not giving them facilities funding, is simply bad for taxpayers.

So why should public school districts be required to sell, at a reasonable price, public school buildings to public charter schools? Because the taxpayers own the buildings.

The post For Charter Schools, SLPS Is Marie Antoinette appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If the lovable bear Winnie the Pooh has a downside, it is his insatiable desire for the sweet taste of honey. Time and again, his uncontrollable urge has ended with him getting his head stuck in the honey pot and needing to be bailed out by his friends. In many ways, Missouri lawmakers have encouraged the same kind of foolishness, continually sweetening the pension pot for public school teachers. If they do not change course — and soon — they will put future lawmakers into an impossible situation where they are forced to call on their friends — the taxpayers — for a major bailout.

Sweetening the pension honey pot for public employees is a very tempting proposition. Indeed, for lawmakers, there is almost no down side because pension promises often are not realized for many years. By improving pension benefits, politicians can please many voters with promises that they do not have to keep. These pension enhancements, however, are not free.

In a new Show-Me Institute case study, Robert Costrell, professor of education reform and economics at the University of Arkansas, detailed the impact of pension enhancements to Missouri’s largest pension system, the Public School Retirement System (PSRS). “Missouri repeatedly and considerably enhanced its pension benefit formula from 1975 to 2001, resulting in large increases in pension wealth, particularly for those retiring in their 50s with 25-30 years of service,” Costrell wrote.

Three essential numbers are used to calculate a teacher’s pension payment from PSRS: years of service, final average salary and a multiplier that allows PSRS to calculate reduced early retirement benefits. Lawmakers can sweeten the pension pot by inflating final average salary calculations, increasing the multiplier or allowing individuals to retire earlier without penalty. Over the past few decades, Missouri lawmakers have employed each of these tactics.

Costrell noted that in 1977, a teacher could retire with his or her full benefits at 55 with 30 years of service. In 1986, the benefit multiplier was increased from 2 percent to 2.1 percent; in 1991, full benefits were granted with 25 years of service; in 1994, the multiplier increased to 2.3 percent; in 1996, lawmakers added insurance benefits into the final average salary calculations; in 1998, they increased the multiplier to the current 2.5 percent; in 1999, they instituted a “Rule of 80,” which allows a teacher to retire with full benefits when his or her age plus experience equals 80. That same year, lawmakers reduced the years used for the final average salary calculation from five to three, a move that increased the final average salary of all retirees.

With all of these enhancements, a teacher in Jefferson City can now retire in his or her early 50s after 30 years in the classroom with a pension that is approximately the equivalent of a lump sum payment of $950,000. That is, the “cash value” of the pension at the time of retirement is close to $1 million.

To keep pace with the pension enhancements, the contribution rate for teachers and their public school employers has increased dramatically from a combined 16 percent in 1975 to 29 percent today. Even with these increases, PSRS has not been able to keep pace with the promised benefits. If we assume a 4 percent return on investment, PSRS has more than $31 billion in unfunded liabilities.

If they are as simple-minded as ol’ Pooh, policymakers might think they are helping create a secure retirement system for teachers when they enact these pension enhancements. But they are really making promises that they (or future lawmakers) cannot keep. If they want to create a secure retirement system for current and future public school teachers, they do not need further enhancements; rather, they should enact fundamental pension reform.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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Whether it is chips at the grocery store or miles per gallon, it’s always good to get more for less. This is especially true in education. That is why a new report by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas is so important. A team of researchers, led by Patrick Wolf, Ph.D., calculated the return on investment of public charter schools. In other words, they looked to see if charter schools are providing more bang for the buck. It turns out they are.

Charter schools throughout the country, and especially in Missouri, spend less per student than traditional public schools. Charter schools, on average, also outperform their traditional counterparts. By combining these facts, the researchers calculated that the productivity advantage for charter schools in math and reading was 40 and 41 percent, respectively.

So, what do you call it when you get better outcomes for less money? I call it a big win for students, parents, and taxpayers.

The post Charter Schools – More Bang For The Buck! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Today, the Show-Me Institute released a new case study by Robert Costrell, professor of economics and education policy at the University of Arkansas. His paper, “Teacher Pension Enhancement In Missouri: 1975 to the Present,” illustrates how state lawmakers have consistently enhanced retirement benefits for teachers. These enhancements have helped create the system we have today, which has an incredible spike in benefits around a teacher’s 25th year and many other flaws.

For more information about pensions, I encourage you to check out our “Missouri Government Pension Fast Facts.”

The post This Illustration Of Missouri Pension Enhancements Says It All appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Recently, an opponent of school choice wrote a piece arguing that conservatives should not support school choice. His arguments were vapid and lacked evidence. I wrote a full response on the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice’s blog. Here is my response to his claim that school choice is less efficient than the current system:

When you examine the evidence it is clear that cost savings are almost universally realized through school choice programs.

A recent study by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas found that the “average public charter school student in the U.S. is receiving $3,814 less in funding than the average traditional public school student.” Despite that fact, public charter schools perform just as well as, if not better, than their traditional public school counterparts. This isn’t rocket science: less funding + equal (or better) outcomes = cost savings and improved efficiency.

The same can be said for private school choice programs. In a comprehensive study for the Friedman Foundation, Greg Forster reviewed the empirical literature on the fiscal effects of private school choice programs. All six studies on the subject found significant savings for taxpayers. In Washington, D.C., for example, it is estimated the Opportunity Scholarship Program saved taxpayers $135 million.

Of course, school choice programs were specifically designed to provide cost-savings. It is possible the savings could disappear over time as choice programs grow in popularity and become more generous. This is not new to publicly financed education systems. Traditional public schools have faced growing costs for decades. Over the past 40 years, inflation-adjusted education spending has increased by more than 180 percent. During that time, the traditional system has offered no hope of reigning in costs; school choice has. They are called education savings accounts (ESAs).

ESAs allow individuals to direct their education dollars to one or multiple schools and service providers. Unspent money remains in the account for parents to use on a host of educational expenses or to be saved for higher education purposes. That ability to save money from year to year puts a downward pressure on prices because it empowers parents to shop cost-consciously and it encourages schools to keep prices competitively low.

You can read my full response on the Friedman Foundation’s blog.

The post Should Conservatives Support School Choice? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Thursday, the Missouri Legislature passed Senate Bill 493. Described as the “transfer fix,” the bill contains many provisions. One is the ability of students to use public dollars to attend a nonsectarian private school. If you believe the hype, I should be celebrating. After all, I am a proponent of private school choice. Sadly, I have been wrestling with whether this is even a victory for the school choice crowd.

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad that the legislature moved in a bipartisan manner to get this bill passed. Unlike the education establishment, I am willing to compromise and there are many needed aspects in this bill. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel as if the students who need educational options got the short end of the stick with this deal.

Am I being too cynical? Should I be celebrating? To answer this question, I asked several school choice policy experts this question:

Is this a win for school choice or does it do more harm than good?

Here were their responses:

Mike McShane – Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

The number of hoops parents and schools are required to jump through in order to participate will most likely prevent students from ever accessing a private education. This is Potemkin private school choice.

Patrick Wolf – Professor and 21^st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas

I wouldn’t expect more than a handful of families to navigate all of those huge roadblocks to exercise private school choice, especially since religious schools are excluded from the program. When families have a broad set of private school choices, nearly 80 percent of them choose private schools with a religious ethos. That is their preference. This is essentially a private school choice program without the private school choice part.

Jonathan Butcher – Education Director at the Goldwater Institute

I don’t think it does more harm than good, but I’m not sure it will accomplish anything. At least not right away.

Matt Ladner – Senior Advisor of Policy and Research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education

The academic catastrophe going on in Kansas City and Saint Louis have been well understood for decades. On the private side of things, this legislation brings to mind an inspector on the Titanic making conditional offers of an approved life vest three years in the future.

Jason Bedrick, policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, both pointed to the exclusion of religious schools and the testing requirement as very negative aspects of the bill.

“It’s especially painful when a ‘school choice’ program is designed in such a way that its passage is, to say the least, no cause for celebration,” Bedrick wrote.

Greene cautioned that this legislation might stifle future pushes to create school choice programs in Missouri.

A fix to some of the transfer issues was needed and on balance, the bill is mostly positive. But given these comments, I think my initial reaction was correct – this is not a school choice bill. It addresses some issues, but it does not expand options for students.

Summary of the private option:

Students in unaccredited schools within unaccredited districts are free to transfer. They must first apply to an accredited school within their district. If there are no spaces, they are able to transfer to another district or, upon voter approval, a private school. The private school must be located within the unaccredited district, nonsectarian, accredited, administer state tests, and meet a few other criteria. There is no transportation for transfer students.

The post Senate Bill 493 Is Not A School Choice Bill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Despite receiving significantly less money, studies have shown that Missouri charter schools are outperforming their neighboring traditional public schools. The fact that charter schools are doing more with less is a testament to choice and competition in education. When schools are free from bureaucratic regulations (like teacher tenure) and students are free to choose their school, good things happen.

The post Missouri Charter Schools: Doing More With Less appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The journal Educational Policy recently released my latest academic paper, “Teacher Effectiveness: An Analysis of Licensure Screens.” My co-author, Julie Trivitt, of the University of Arkansas, and I examined whether teachers who were traditionally certified are more effective than teachers who were alternatively certified, as measured by their ability to increase student achievement on Arkansas’ standardized tests. Traditionally certified teachers typically graduate from colleges of education and have student teaching experience whereas alternatively certified teachers often enter the classroom with little to no classroom experience. What we found might surprise you— the two groups of teachers performed at very similar levels.

How could it be that teachers who have gone through education programs and student teaching are no more effective than teachers with little to no experience? It seems a large factor in teacher effectiveness is a teacher’s academic capability. In our sample, there were significant differences between the traditionally and alternatively certified teachers in this regard.

The individuals entering the profession via an alternative route score higher on licensure exams. This is not out of the ordinary. In New York, “only 5 percent of newly hired Teaching Fellows and TFA teachers in 2003 failed the LAST [Liberal Arts and Sciences Test] exam on their first attempt, while 16.2 percent of newly hired traditional teachers failed the LAST exam.”

Opponents of alternative teacher licensure programs often lament that the new teachers will be “experimenting” on students. There is certainly something gained from experience, but the academic literature consistently shows that the difference between traditionally and alternatively certified teachers in terms of effectiveness is negligible.

Trivitt and I concluded that “Quality teachers simply cannot be identified exclusively by their licensure route or exam scores.” Therefore, there are really only two options: “improve licensure screens to the point that we can identify teacher quality very accurately or allow schools to use reasonable screens and identify quality teachers in practice.” To me, the latter sounds like a better policy — let local schools hire the individuals they think are the best for the job, regardless of certification.

The post Traditional vs. Alternative Teacher Licensure: What Does The Data Say? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it is suing to block the Louisiana school voucher program. The Louisiana program provides mostly poor, minority children with access to private schools. The DOJ claims the voucher program may be in violation of desegregation orders, essentially claiming that the voucher program is hurting desegregation efforts. This is an empirical claim, but the claim is false.

Using student-level data, Anna Egalite and Jonathan Mills, Doctoral Academy fellows at the University of Arkansas, examined the impact of each student’s “switch” on the racial composition of each school in a recent article in Education Next. They concluded:

Our analysis of the Louisiana Scholarship Program reveals that the vouchers used by the subset of recipients for whom information is available have supported public-school desegregation efforts. By leaving schools in which their racial group was overrepresented relative to the surrounding communities, voucher users have improved integration in Louisiana public schools….Based on this evidence, we conclude that the LSP is unlikely to have harmed desegregation efforts in Louisiana. To the contrary, the statewide school voucher program appears to have brought greater integration to Louisiana’s public schools.

In response to the DOJ lawsuit, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal remarked, the “Department of Justice is attempting to use old rules designed to prevent discrimination against minority children to try and keep these children trapped in failing schools.” Egalite’s and Mills’ research demonstrates that those “old rules” most likely are not being violated, because the data actually show that the voucher program is improving racial integration.

The post Louisiana Voucher Program Improves Desegregation Efforts 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.

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I spent hours studying content that it was assumed an econ PhD student would already know and regularly received help from classmates. The most help, however, came from a former hedge fund analyst and professors at MIT. While I completed my math for economic analysis course, I also watched MIT lectures on linear algebra. I visited Khan Academy regularly to learn how to use the chain rule or product rule when finding derivatives. The videos were more effective in teaching me than my professor, because I could pause the videos, re-watch them, and practice as they played. I am sure the professor would have been quite frustrated if I demanded that he repeat what he said as much as I replayed those videos.

Recently, one of the founders of Coursera, a free online program that delivers free, high-quality college level courses to people around the world, gave a TED Talk on the ability of technology to reinvent how we deliver education (see also Salman Khan’s TED Talk).

High-quality education programs are increasingly being provided for free. There is a real opportunity for schools, especially K-12 schools, to see tremendous benefits from these programs. Imagine a high school student taking introduction to finance, while the student at the computer next to him or her takes Greek and Roman mythology. The technology is available, so what is stopping us from utilizing the power of technology to change how we educate students? Tradition and government regulation.

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