“When it comes to your child’s education, one size definitely doesn’t fit all.” That’s a quote from Milton Friedman, right? Wrong. (Although he did say things along those lines.)

I found that quote on the St. Louis Public Schools’ website, in the magnet schools brochure. The brochure lauds magnets for their diversity (because enrollment isn’t limited to a particular neighborhood), unique academics, and specialized instruction. And you’ve got to hand it to them: One of the top public high schools in the St. Louis area — Metro Academic & Classical High School — is a magnet.

So, my question is, if one size doesn’t fit all, why not run the rest of the district on the same model? Under the current system, only a select few have access to magnet school education. Enrollment in the magnets is strictly limited. Although the brochure describes the application process as “simple” and “fair,” it looks anything but. Classes are populated according to a list of four different priority tiers, and African-American city residents are in the lowest tier of all. African-Americans in the county are not even eligible to apply, unlike their white, Asian, or Hispanic neighbors. Even after limiting eligibility by race and residence, applications are entered in a lottery. If you get an unlucky number, you’re stuck in your one-size-fits-all traditional public school.

SLPS seems to recognize that students aren’t all the same. I hope they’ll act on that knowledge and give residents educational choices — or, at least, open a few more magnet schools to meet demand.

There are some very intriguing discussions about school choice going on in Denver, among participants at some sort of a convention that is, apparently, being held there right now. Honestly, the write-ups I have read about this event’s school choice discussions have been very exciting. You can find articles and discussion about them here at Education Week, and here at Kausfiles.

I’ve long been waiting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to catch up with the Columbia newspapers and start an education blog. I am happy to announce that they now have: The Grade promises to be an interesting source of commentary on education news both in and out of the state. Current topics of discussion include: a new policy in Texas allowing teachers to carry handguns; enrollment numbers at local universities; and districts’ efforts to involve parents as they try to hold on to accreditation.

I hope some of the writers there will weigh in on the charter school debate. Charter school expansion is taking off across the country, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear a mention of charters during the Democratic National Convention last night (Maya Soetoro-Ng has taught in one).

Despite spending more per student than all but two states, maintaining a 14:1 student-to-teacher ratio, and offering among the higher teacher salaries in the nation, Washington, D.C., has long had the absolute worst public school system in the nation. The District’s schools rank dead last in math and reading, as assessed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress evaluations. Washington has struggled for decades to change this culture of academic failure, but to no avail.

But, as Newsweek recently reported, the District is now in the midst of a paradigm-shift regarding the way that schooling is done. The first break from tradition came with the District’s successful introduction of dozens of charter schools. Shortly thereafter, Congress authorized a scholarship program that allows more than 1,800 low-income students (the program had four times that many applicants) to attend the best available schools, whether public or private. Then, shortly after his election in 2006, Mayor Adrian Fenty stripped authority from the school board and appointed Michelle Rhee as the chancellor of Washington’s public schools.

The article does an excellent job of highlighting how the city’s schools had been paralyzed by the teachers’ unions’ staunch opposition to any changes that would have made it easier to remove ineffective administrators and educators, and it gives a snapshot of how D.C.’s leadership is making its first concerted effort to transform the city’s public education landscape in a fundamental way. In addition to their willingness to consolidate underpopulated schools and fire ineffective-but-popular administrators, Rhee and Mayor Fenty have raised the possibility of nearly doubling the salaries of the city’s teachers, provided that they are willing to abandon the security of tenure. These changes are terrifying for the educational establishment, which has mobilized an enormous effort to try and maintain the status quo, but these are precisely the kinds of fundamental reforms necessary to ensure that public schools are more focused on meeting the needs of their children than they are on creating job security for education professionals.

Given that St. Louis shares many of the same challenges facing Washington, D.C., the city would be wise to watch Washington’s progress as we evaluate the future of our own school system.

This week, I have been very intrigued by all of the coverage and media attention received by college and university administrators and their efforts to mitigate some of the behavioral issues on campuses throughout the country. Some of the most publicized attempts by groups such as the Amethyst Initiative, which consists of chancellors and presidents from universities and colleges, have been targeted at lowering the drinking age from 21 years of age to 18, to prevent the culture of binge drinking. While opening up debates about lowering the drinking age is fine and dandy, I must say that I was tickled pink when I read an AP article at the Post-Dispatch site titled “Universities try to control students off campus.”

Many campuses across the country are starting to monitor the off-campus activities of students much more closely, because of the large number of students that pursue off campus living arrangements. Large schools, such as the University of Washington, Penn State, and the University of Colorado–Boulder, have enforced such laws, and have seen progress. According to the article, “Being cited for breaking the city’s noise regulations is enough to score an invite to the [University of Washington's] student conduct office.”

Granted, a college or university has the right to create a code of conduct that is conducive to the educational environment on campus. If colleges do not want noisy, disruptive students to attend their school, that is their right and academic freedom. The only concern I have is in how they would investigate these occurrences. If a student were to receive a citation for a noise violation, would the school wait to see if the ticket is actually challenged? At Duke University, for instance, the campus codes only require that a student report misbehavior to campus officials. This could easily represent another example of administrators punishing first and asking questions later. There is no liberty in just being accused of something and then reprimanded — there must be due process.

This only leaves a few choices for students in the future: accept these strict regulations; voice their concerns and seek change in the institution; or withdraw and attend a more lenient college or university. For the men in Old School and Animal House, this would be an easy decision.

One of the more radical (and controversial) ideas in education reform these days is to offer students cold, hard cash in exchange for performance. The idea is that, although some students might not be motivated by the sheer joy of learning, their priorities might change if they are offered concrete financial rewards for academic achievement.

The New York Times has a story today discussing the mixed results of a recent pilot program in New York City. The privately funded program, which included several thousand students in 31 high schools (25 public schools and six Catholic schools, all chosen based on criteria including minority enrollment and prior student test performance), sought to encourage students to take and pass Advanced Placement exams by offering them up to $1,000 for earning passing scores on those tests.

In 2007, 4,275 students from these schools took AP exams, which are graded on a 1–5 scale with 1 being worst and 5 being the best. Of those students, 174 (4.1 percent) attained the highest score, while 403 (9.4 percent) scored 4, and 904 (21.1 percent) scored 3, the lowest passing grade. Overall, 34.6 percent of the test takers in 2007 earned passing grades.

In 2008, knowing that a good score could mean a lot of money, 4,620 students took the exams. Of those, 207 (4.5 percent) scored 5, 398 (8.6 percent) scored 4, and 871 (18.9 percent) scored 3. So, just on the surface — and in the absence of any additional information — the monetary incentive seems to have encouraged an additional 345 students to take the test, as well as spurring a slight increase in the percentage of test takers earning the highest possible score. But the rest of the story is that a smaller percentage of these schools’ 2008 test takers (32 percent) performed well enough to pass.

This was just the first year for this incentive program, and the monetary incentives were announced after the school year had already begun and class assignments were set, so it’s hard to say whether we can learn much of anything from these results. While I know that the idea of paying students for academic performance is somewhat controversial, as a matter of theory I do believe that these sorts of financial incentives are likely to lead to improved student performance. I am also aware that theory does not always translate into reality, so I will be very interested to see future studies assessing the impact of this and similar programs.

What do you think about rewarding students for academic performance?

I frequently run into critics of parental choice in education who oppose tuition tax credits, charter schools, and other alternatives to the traditional public schools. They argue that these alternatives won’t meet expectations, haven’t succeeded in the past, or perhaps that they’ll even have harmful effects on society. For example, a comment on this post I wrote earlier in the month suggests that charter schools shouldn’t be expanded because not all such schools have a proven track record.

Every time I hear these arguments, I’m reminded of a post Megan McArdle wrote last year. She presents 11 of the most common criticisms of parental choice, and debunks them all. Although she refers specifically to voucher programs, I think her reasoning applies to all the other choice initiatives that are on the table. Here’s how she responds to the oft-heard statement, “Vouchers don’t work”:

Vouchers are no panacea, and they may not work at all. But we know that what we’re doing now isn’t working, and moreover, hasn’t worked for going on fifty years. Unless you’ve got compelling evidence that your plan will overcome all the barriers that have doomed urban school reform for decades, and actually succeed in educating more children (rather than enriching the lives of teachers, administrators, and curriculum salesmen, who certainly have been helped by the many failed educational overhauls), why not let a thousand points of light bloom?

Read the whole thing!

The Friedman Foundation has graded all 50 states on how they regulate private schools. The states with the highest grades have clear regulations to protect health and safety, but don’t set up barriers to entry or stifle innovation. Missouri did very well, with a grade of A-.

I’m sure the good regulatory environment in Missouri has contributed to its flourishing market for private education. There are many successful private schools throughout the state; GreatSchools lists 187 in St. Louis, 65 in Kansas City, 14 in Columbia, and 13 in Springfield.

Edspresso links to this article about Ohio’s Autism Scholarship Program. The program has been growing since Ohio instituted it in 2003, and now more than 1,000 autistic students use the scholarships to attend private schools and receive specialized therapies.

Ohio’s program is a win-win situation. Of course, the autistic students benefit from the scholarships, but their public school districts have a lot to gain as well. Without the scholarship program, districts would be expected to educate all the disabled students who live within their boundaries. It might be reasonable to ask districts to accommodate mild to moderate disabilities; autism, though, can be another story.

Children with severe cases of autism may struggle to communicate or need constant help with daily tasks. If teachers don’t have experience with this complex condition, it’ll be a challenge for them to get an autistic child through the school day, let alone provide specialized instruction. Some districts recognize this problem and pay private school tuition for autistic students, but a statewide scholarship program is more equitable. Otherwise, a district with an unusually high number of autistic students is burdened with all their tuition bills, while a comparable district with no autistic students needn’t contribute anything.

The General Assembly considered a proposal for an autism scholarship program in Missouri this past year. The public relations campaign in favor of it concentrated on how it would help the children. I’d just like to point out that it would help districts too. In particular, small rural districts that don’t have the resources to treat autism would be free to focus on other students.

Hi, all:

Cynthia and I have been writing about education and voting issues nearly daily for the past few months — and we wanted to let you know that we’ll be taking a break.

We’ve reached a time-intensive point in our research. We do intend to pick up here again as soon as possible, to write more about the same. And, of course, about the conclusions that we come to after mulling over 524 superintendent contracts and hundreds of school election results.

Thank you for your comments, emails and readership. We’ve learned a lot from your responses.

— Audrey and Cynthia

P.S.: Even though we won’t be posting regularly for a while, we’re still interested in your comments, questions, or input. Feel free to email Cynthia or myself any time.

I have recently returned from a two-week road trip through the rural parts of our state, where I was out meeting people at county fairs and talking to them about how free-market policies could create greater opportunities for prosperity in their communities.

One of the most common issues that I discussed was that of school choice. While many of the people I spoke to felt that their local public schools were doing the best they could, almost everyone I spoke to agreed that parents ought to have the opportunity to send their children to the best available schools — including public schools in nearby communities, or local private schools. Most also instinctively recognized that improving the education of their young people could help to attract more and better-paying jobs to their communities. The people I spoke to made it resoundingly clear that education is definitely an issue that is important to folks in rural Missouri.

In the midst of my trip, I had the pleasure of stopping in Kansas City to attend a celebration of Milton Friedman’s life and career. For those who don’t know, Friedman was a Nobel laureate who proposed school choice as the best solution for providing publicly funded education. In honor of his birthday, organizations across the nation hosted a total of 50 events to promote and celebrate his ideas. Here in Missouri, the Show-Me Institute co-hosted an event with the Kansas City Public Library at which Kevin Chavous, a nationally respected attorney and school choice advocate, discussed the importance of education reform in America. Nearly 100 people attended, and it was absolutely exhilarating to see so many people come out in support of improving educational opportunities for the children of this state.

I highly recommend that you check out the library’s video of this event, as well as Chavous’ recent book!

There’s no question in my mind that the “Yes for Schools First” campaign would more accurately be called “Yes for Casinos First.” But schools would finish a close second if the initiative passes in November.

The initiative proposes eliminating the $500 loss limit in Missouri casinos imposed by the Missouri Gaming Commission, which says that casinos “shall insure through internal controls that no person shall lose more than five hundred dollars ($500) during each gambling excursion.”

If voters approve removing that regulation, casinos will respond by increasing the gambling tax from 20 to 21 percent. Why is that important to Missouri public education? The vast majority of those tax dollars go toward education spending in the state.

I know full well the criticisms that will be leveled at this post. Removing the loss limit preys on those addicted to gambling, for starters.

Gambling is not synonymous with casinos. Those who have problems would find a way to gamble — on the Internet, at poker night in their own homes, at their church bingo night, or even by traveling to other states. Attacking a lawful form of entertainment is an outlet for frustration with a different problem. And it’s an entirely legitimate problem. But removing temptation from one quarter isn’t the answer. It’s not the casinos that create the problem, just like it’s not the poker or bingo nights.

Another criticism is the extortionist bent to the initiative. It’s the nudge-nudge, wink-wink “let us get away with taking more money and we’ll kick some your way.”

It’s true that casinos are asking to be allowed to take more money, but in my line of thinking, they shouldn’t have to ask in the first place. Why is the loss limit now in place? Why should the government step in to tell me how much money I can spend on entertainment in any given evening?

Casinos are simply providing Missourians with an incentive to remove a regulation that limits their business. If the incentive is great enough, Missourians will respond. But it should be Missouri citizens who decide, not the government deciding for them.

And a final criticism is the rhetoric being used by the “Yes for Schools First” campaign. Many would say it’s a business deal cloaked in feel-good language. I’ve already acknowledged my misgivings about the wording of the initiative, and I’m not overly fond of the fact that casinos can use schools to make their business seem more altruistic.

Anyone who gives it half a thought knows casinos aren’t in it for the schools. They’re businesses, and they’re in it for profit. But why shouldn’t Missouri schools profit at the same time? You’d be hard-pressed to argue that a person who otherwise wouldn’t set foot in a casino will choose to gamble just to help the schools.

Missouri voters will have to carefully weigh their options this November. Gambling addiction is a serious problem, and not one I’m trying to make light of. But the gambling in question is legal in Missouri. And I simply do not believe that removing the casino loss limit will appreciably change the amount of gambling engaged in by Missouri citizens. The only change I anticipate is that it may become more localized.

And it will help Missouri schools.

If you have comments, please leave them below, or email me.

Tuesday, the Columbia Public Schools superintendent announced that she was retiring.

The timing was off. The shuffle of superintendents, either into retirement or among school districts, already happened this year. Most made the transition July 1.

According to the city’s two newspapers, at least a few school board members had no idea Superintendent Phyllis Chase was considering retirement until the board’s closed meeting with Chase. That’s strange, too, though allowable. Chase’s contract with the district lets her terminate the contract upon retirement at any time — no notice period was specified. Her retirement is effective Aug. 31.

Within minutes of her announcement yesterday, online comments sprang up on newspaper message boards and blogs, blaming the exiting superintendent for budget and curriculum problems, low MAP scores, and a total lack of community trust in the operation of the school district. In the past, Chase has been criticized for receiving a much-too-high salary — $200,340 — as well as a large car allowance of $7,200 per year.

A major part of my research this summer has been to request and collect the contracts of every single Missouri superintendent (as of today, we have 335). After reading many of those, and speaking with a few superintendents about the difficulties they and their districts face, I think one of the main hazards of being superintendent is the risk of public blame and accusations.

I spent a year reporting on this school district for the Columbia Missourian, so I have mixed feelings about Chase leaving. On one hand, she did seem to control public information tightly, and yes, she was slow to admit mistakes and make fixes. Blame for that rests squarely on her shoulders. However, this retirement looks like she is taking a fall for the district and its other administrators. And it’s a graceful one.

Continue reading "Responsibility" »

Edudiva is blogging about the just-released MAP scores. There’s good news and bad news: Some districts in the greater St. Louis area have high scores, with most students at or above grade level. Other districts have appallingly low percentages of students proficient in math or communication arts. It’s not a simple city/county divide, either. The best districts are in the county, but so are some of the worst.

Chicago has a similar problem with inconsistent suburban districts. They’re considering expanding charter schools in the suburbs, so families in the lowest-performing districts have a choice. Chicago has two suburban charters now, and parents are campaigning for a new one in Waukegan, Ill. Illinois state law allows a limited number of charter schools in the suburbs, and it looks like they’ll try to target the districts that don’t yet face much competition.

The same idea could be applied in St. Louis County. There probably wouldn’t be a huge demand for a charter school in the Clayton district, but new charters in the now-unaccredited Wellston district would give students an option other than leaving the area.

We have a desk stacked with 324 superintendent contracts. Quite a few superintendents have asked Audrey and me just what we’re doing with those contracts. It’s a fair question, and one we haven’t completely addressed for our readers.

We’ve said that we’re looking beyond salary, and that our purpose is research, not advocacy. Now, let’s talk about what our research includes.

I can’t speak for Audrey, but for me, at least, sketching out superintendent compensation for Missouri citizens is important not because it allows me or the Show-Me Institute to say we should change this or that to improve public education, but because it allows Missourians to see where their tax dollars are going. And it allows them to make judgments about how their money is being spent, apart from what I or SMI might think.

We’ve requested contracts from every Missouri superintendent, and we’ve received more than half. While we’re waiting for the remaining 200, we’ve begun entering the contract information into a spreadsheet. In all honesty, it’s a judgment call — what gets coded, what doesn’t, or how to compare benefits across contracts when they’re often not entirely comparable.

For the sake of increasing public information, I’d rather be more thorough than overlook something important.

Continue reading "It’s a Judgment Call" »

There are wide gaps in pay and benefits between superintendents at rich and poor districts — even for those with seemingly equal qualifications. I suspect that a large reason several superintendents have been so wary of providing their contracts is that they know how big the range in compensation is.

For teachers, pay is pretty simple. Missouri public school districts have “teacher salary schedules” to determine each teacher’s salary. Generally, there are two factors: relevant experience and education. Think of each level of education as a ladder, with years of experience as rungs. When a teacher comes into the district, he’s placed on a ladder rung, and moves up in pay each year he stays with the district. For example, at Waynesville School District (linked above), a teacher with a Master’s degree and three years of experience earns $40,634, while someone with four years of experience earns $41,164.

Those salary schedules are hyper-public. Many districts, such as Lee’s Summit, also post online salary schedules for other employees, such as custodians.

Notably absent is a superintendent salary schedule. Unlike teacher pay, those figures aren’t standardized within a district. Instead, salaries are negotiated when a superintendent is first hired, and usually amended each year at school board meetings. The contracts vary widely. Sure, superintendents tend to earn more at larger districts than at smaller ones. Other things, like whether a superintendent has an advanced degree, and the number of years he has worked at the district, play a role.

But, sometimes, the district just might have more money to spread around.

Continue reading "What You Pay For" »

Andrew Coulson takes issue with a news story that describes Swedish education as “socialist.” Although schools in Sweden are financed by the government, they compete vigorously for students. Some of the schools are run by for-profit companies, which earn a profit when they deliver satisfactory education for less than the amount of state funding they receive. Who decides whether the instruction is satisfactory? The students and parents, who can always switch to whatever school looks better. Coulson points out that if Sweden’s system is socialist, the American public education system, which assigns kids to government-run schools based on geographic location, is far worse.

Coulson’s right: It’s sloppy reporting to assume America’s education system is normal while calling Sweden’s “socialist.” That’s not to say that we should drop everything and try to be just like Sweden. There are some aspects of the Swedish system that we don’t need to emulate. For example, Swedish schools aren’t allowed to charge tuition, so all schools are limited by the amount of the state voucher. They are also required to teach a national curriculum, although they have some leeway to experiment with teaching methods and to make other changes.

The good news is that we already have some of the positive aspects of Sweden’s system in place here. Parents can choose charter schools or the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program as alternatives to their assigned public schools. Unfortunately, these options are limited — charter schools operate in only two cities of Missouri, and the online instruction program is a monolithic virtual academy rather than competing programs. Sweden is impressive because it has made educational choices available to all Swedish families, and the number of independent schools there has soared since they reformed the system. We don’t need to be just like Sweden, but we should learn from them and offer a wider array of choices to everybody.

Two superintendents recently asked me to disclose a list of donors to the Show-Me Institute, as well as the amount of their donations. This came after my request for their employment contracts with their respective school districts. I asked how their school districts paid them; they asked who paid for my research.

But there’s a crucial difference. Their districts pay them with taxpayer dollars. The Show-Me Institute pays me with private ones. The two situations just aren’t comparable.

Classifying superintendent compensation as part of public record isn’t arbitrary. Missouri citizens fund superintendents, and they have a right to know where their tax dollars are going.

When denying our request to waive research and copying fees, one superintendent wrote that this research wouldn’t serve the public good, but rather personal agendas.

While I understand asking about compensation can be a touchy subject, superintendents signed up for this. They made themselves public figures the moment they took a job with a public entity. But the knee-jerk protectionist tendency is still there. Even when superintendents comply with my requests and send their contracts, the information sometimes come with comments.

“I understand it is your intent to lobby against public schools with this information,” wrote one superintendent on a cover page sent with his contract. “What a shame, the focus continues to be on anything but the students.”

I am not writing this post because I feel the need to defend or justify my research. I would hardly be working for the education branch of an organization if my intent were to fight against public education. I am a product of public education, from elementary school clear through to the public university I attended. But I do want to address, again, the purpose of what Audrey and I are doing.

Continue reading "Where Is the Focus?" »

Paul, Bill, David, Steve, Michael. It’s not an exhaustive list, but those are some of the most common superintendent names. “Mary” shows up much less often.

In fact, nearly 79 percent* of Missouri superintendents are male.

Though it’s getting better, it’s a sad fact that men tend to earn higher salaries than equally qualified women. It’s a sad fact that there are more men in leadership positions than women.

But in school districts, where superintendents tend to come from the ranks of teachers and administrators, this is shocking. It’s not just that a large majority of Missouri superintendents are male. It’s that a large majority of superintendents are male while a large majority of school district employees are female. According to the National Center of Education Information, 82 percent of all teachers in the United States were female in 2005.

Continue reading "For the Ladies (All 105 of Them)" »

Help America Vote Act. It sounds pretty innocuous, even appealing. But even the most well-intentioned laws can have unintended consequences.

“It started with HAVA,” Kristy Urich, Grundy County’s clerk, said. “We had to have very expensive electronic equipment, and it forced us into having fewer polling places.”

Grundy County underwent precinct consolidation in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, meaning it reduced the number of polling places available to voters. Why? To save money.

HAVA requires that federal money be given to states: “to replace punch card voting systems or lever voting systems (as the case may be) in qualifying precincts within that State with a voting system (by purchase, lease, or such other arrangement as may be appropriate) [...]”

But even though federal funds were available, there was only so much money to go around.

“They allocated X amount of dollars per location,” Urich said. “And they don’t pay for ongoing maintenance. Although they paid for most of the original setup costs, they don’t continue to pay.”

Without enough federal funds, changing over to more high-tech voting systems was cost prohibitive. And, just like that, places to vote disappeared from Grundy County.

Continue reading "Helping Missourians Vote?" »

In 2004, the Plato R-V School District held financial elections in April, August, and November. Two years later, the bond that district officials hoped to pass showed up again on the November ballot.

“We were trying to pass a bond issue two or three years in a row,” said Superintendent Victor Slape. “Trying to pass it whenever we could, really. … More people vote in November, and we wanted to make sure people got the opportunity to vote.”

Turns out that Cynthia’s suspicion, that school districts will sometimes continue to put a financial issue up for vote until it passes, is true. And that’s a primary reason school districts occasionally add elections to the November ballot, despite the higher cost.

Superintendent of the Albany School District Ted Spessard said the costs of any school election in his district are “in the thousands.” He estimated that the district pays about two to three thousand dollars in order to put an issue on the ballot.

Continue reading "Explanation" »

November elections garner higher turnout. But they cost more, too. So, if a school district puts a finanical issue on the ballot in November, they’ll get more voters to the polls than they would in April — but boosting the voter count will cost them. It’s not a question of just typing a few more lines on the ballot.

How much does the cost increase?

“It varies,” said Darryl Kempf, Cooper County’s clerk. “There is no magic number.”

Political subdivisions — school, fire, and hospital districts, to name a few — help split the election tab.

“Missouri law requires that election costs be shared proportionally,” Betsy Byers, elections outreach and education coordinator for the Missouri Secretary of State, said. When determining how much each subdivision pays, the county charges based on the number of registered voters.

Continue reading "Their Fair Share?" »

In 1982, the state of Missouri decided to give more money to schools, and to lower each school district’s property tax levy.

The first part, giving more money to schools, is working well enough. For the 2005–06 school year, the state handed out about $839.5 million from the designated-for-schools one-cent sales tax. That’s up from the $634 million it gave to schools in 1983–84 (both figures adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars).

But school districts have, through local elections, bypassed the state’s effort to keep property taxes down. While local property taxes are lower than they were before 1982, they have crept up from a little more than $2 to about $4.

To give schools more money, the state levied a one-cent sales tax, in legislation known as Propsition C. Each year, revenues from that tax are collected and divvied up among each public school student.* Very roughly, that comes to about $845 per student, according to Roger Dorson, director of finance for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The money is then sent out to schools, but it comes with strings. Half of the Prop. C money is new money for schools — a gift, if you will. But the other half is more complicated.

When a school district takes the second half of the Prop. C money, it must “roll back” the local school property tax levy. By how much? Well, enough to lower its tax revenues by the amount that the state gave it. For example, if a school district were given $1 million from the state, it would have to lower its levy so that it took in $500,000 less in property tax revenues.

Effectively, the state was trying to move some of the burden of funding schools from property owners to the people who spend more.

But school districts have gone to the ballot box to get more money, on top of what the state began to give them in 1982. Since Prop. C took effect, school districts have been asking voters give up the state-mandated reduction in local property taxes.

Voters have said yes. As of this year, 430 school districts (of 524) have full waivers, according to Dorson. That means those districts do not — and, unless their voters asked for it, will never — have to reduce their property taxes because of Prop. C revenues.

I won’t say that Prop. C rollbacks are unfair. After all, district voters are the ones who approve them (though which voters vote is something to watch out for). But it is apparent that the state’s goal to keep local property taxes low is slowly eroding. And that a statewide sales tax now helps foot the ever-growing cost for schools.

* In determining state aid, each school calculates its average daily attendance. Students are weighted differently if they come from low-income families, are not native English speakers, or are special needs students. After those factors are taken into account, the state awards aid based on each school district’s “Weighted Average Daily Attendance.”

Sixty-five percent. If you get it on a test, you’re barely scraping by. If you get it as turnout in a presidential election, you’re thrilled.

In fact, Missouri’s average county turnout in the 2004 presidential election was just about that — 65.12 percent. But that’s in the highest-profile election in the United States. So, what happens in local school board elections? Well, obviously, turnout dips. Or plummets.

In a June 2008 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 83 percent of Americans said that education was either ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ to them in making their decision on who to vote for this November.

If education is so important to so many people, selecting the president is just step one, right? We should expect to see high turnout in local elections, too, because it’s those elections in which voters ostensibly have the most direct influence on their own local education policy.

In Missouri school districts, at least, the exact opposite is true.

Continue reading "Extremely Important?" »

This is a continuation of my prior post about the history of school finance in the United States.

The adage holds: Nothing is free. When states began to pay school districts to educate children, the money came with regulations — and those regulations drove the system of attendance reports, standardized testing, and school administrators that we have today.

After school districts began taxing their communities to pay for schools, states started to step in, according to Elwood Cubberly in his book Public Education in the United States. And the moment a district began to depend on state money, it had to cope with the threat of the state taking that support away.

What began as a small effort by states to funnel land — as well as revenues from liquor and marriage licenses — to schools has expanded enormously. The state pays out more than $3 billion per year to Missouri school districts alone, according to numbers from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Continue reading "Strings (or, With State Dollars Come Bureaucracies)" »

School board members negotiate how much school district employees earn. They’re the ones who determine salary raises for teachers, and they’re the ones who choose a district’s superintendent and how much he makes.

So, who chooses the school board members?

Voters. But some of them have more on the line than others. A school district is one of the few places where employees have some say in choosing the people who will ultimately affect the size of their paychecks.

Continue reading "How Much Say Do They Have?" »

After 38 ½ years of service, Barbara Trzeszkowski reported for her last day of work on Monday at the Keansburg Board of Education. If her contract with the district withstands a number of legal and governmental challenges, the superintendent will ease into retirement with a $740,876 severance package that the state’s top education official compared to the “golden parachute” awarded to retiring Fortune 500 executives.

That’s the first paragraph (emphasis added, in all of this post’s quotations) from a New York Times article about superintendent pay in New York. After hearing more about Trzeszkowski’s contract, according to the article, New York politicians were outraged at the taxpayer expense involved in such an enormous retirement package.

Trzeszkowski’s benefit package is plump, to say the least:

In the next few weeks, Ms. Trzeszkowski, 60, was scheduled to receive $14,449 for unused vacation days, the first third of the $170,137 she had amassed in unused sick days, and the first 20 percent of $556,290 in severance pay. This was in addition to the $103,889 annual pension she was to collect from the district for the rest of her life.

To put this into perspective, many Missouri contracts I’ve seen have caps on the number of unused vacation or sick days for which a superintendent can collect pay. But some don’t. Several Missouri superintendents earn more than the $170,137 Trzeszkowski collects. However, the factor sending her benefits sky-high is the 38 and a half years she spent with her district, about 10 of which were as superintendent, the others as a teacher.

What can I say? The numbers speak for themselves. She is set to receive a great deal of money for the rest of her life in exchange for working for a single school district for more than 38 years.

Is it a fair trade? After all, Trzeszkowski certainly was loyal to her district. Was it her job to draw attention to the size of her benefit package? Well, at the very least, her school district’s board of education should have known better when negotiating her contract. At least one of them didn’t, according to the article:

Although he seconded the motion to approve Ms. Trzeszkowski’s five-year contract in February 2004, James Cocuzza, a former board member who is now a borough councilman in Keansburg, said he did not remember it.

“For 15 years, I always fought for zero increases in taxes,” he said. “I don’t see myself giving away three quarters of a million dollars.”

While Mr. Cocuzza said he regrets not paying more attention, he added that he was probably not alone in allowing such contracts to slip through.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “We’re not professionals. That’s what we have the attorneys and negotiators for. But wait until the state checks out all the other districts and sees the contracts that got through. I bet they all got nice packages.”

Resolved, that next to life and liberty, we consider education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind.
Resolved, that the public funds should be appropriated (to a reasonable extent) to the purpose of education upon a regular system that shall insure the opportunity to every individual of obtaining a competent education before he shall have arrived at the age of maturity.

So voted New York City’s party of Mechanics and Workingmen in 1829.

There wasn’t always public education in the United States. And the state didn’t always pay. Our current system, in which property owners pay for public education regardless of whether they have children in school, came about after decades of debate. My most recent posts have touched on school district tax levies and state funding. Before going further, I wanted to reach back to where this all began. How did we arrive at this system of partial federal and state funding combined with local property tax levies?

There is a fantastic reference, Public Education in the United States, that discusses education’s history from the founding of the colonies until the book’s publication in 1919. The book itself is out of print, but a used bookstore should be able to track it down for you cheaply. Or, even better, the entire book is free to read online.

Its history of public finance for schools is something I want to summarize, in part. Our current system of public education, which seems like such a basic right now, was an argument that spanned decades in the mid-1800s. Author Ellwood Cubberly wrote: “Excepting the battle for the abolition of slavery, perhaps no question has ever been before the American people for settlement which caused so much feeling or aroused such bitter antagonisms.”

Continue reading "Foundation(s)" »

After you hear it the fifth or sixth time, you start to believe it.

All this time, I’ve been thinking I had the short end of the stick in filing Sunshine Law requests for school district election results with Missouri county clerks. But, as it turns out, they may be just as frustrated as I am.

“I am covered up right now,” said Don Firebaugh, Madison County’s clerk, when I called to ask for some additional information.

Well, August is fast approaching, so it occurred to me there might be some truth in that statement. But, at the time, I brushed it off as one more attempt to keep from doing the work. Of course these clerks are busy, but how difficult could it be to look up a couple of numbers? And how many requests for public information do they really get?

Well, the answer might be more than you would suspect.

Continue reading "Is It Just Too Much?" »

The Post-Dispatch ran an editorial today rehashing the continuing problems facing St. Louis’s public school system. The Special Administrative Board appointed by the state when the school district lost its accreditation is facing an enormous budget deficit. The board’s answer (thus far) seems to be to closing some facilities, cutting back on bus routes, and eliminating support staff from the district’s schools. The author notes that while school officials are struggling to come up with a plan, “parents are voting with their feet” and heading to parochial, charter, or suburban public schools.

In the editorial, the author poses several questions: “If a centrally administered urban district full of troubled students, entrenched political interests and an aging infrastructure can’t be maintained, and if the district doesn’t improve its academic performance within three years, what is Plan B? [...] What are the best and quickest options for creating a new system? Would a new model create genuine value or just make problems worse?”

In fact, I think the author has inadvertently answered his or her own question. As the column pointed out, parents are coming up with their own solutions by seeking out schools that are already prepared to meet the needs of their children, as opposed to waiting years for St. Louis’ public schools to come up with a fix for their woes. While the editorial author worries that this exodus away from the public schools “reduces the amount of money the state provides to the district for the expensive process of urban education,” three points ought to be understood regarding that concern:

1. More than half of the funding for the St. Louis public schools (roughly $6,000 per student) comes from local tax revenues;
2. When a student leaves the public schools, the schools retain all of the local funds that would have otherwise been used to educate that student;
3. Thus, when parents choose to pull their children out of the public schools, the schools actually have more money per student to use in educating those that remain in the public school system.

Even though student departures will leave the public schools with more per-student funding, this alone is unlikely to improve the performance of the city’s schools. As we have pointed out elsewhere, increases to per-pupil spending make no difference in students’ academic achievement. As the parents moving their children out of the St. Louis public schools realize, real gains in education come when students are matched with schools and teachers that suit their academic needs.

So, the biggest problem is that many parents in St. Louis (and other failing school districts) can’t afford to send their children to the schools best suited to their educational needs. Fortunately, this is an issue that Missourians can do something about. For the past several years, the General Assembly has considered (but rejected) plans that would offer tax credits to individuals and corporations who donate to scholarship organizations established to help disadvantaged students attend the schools that fit them best. Such a plan would both increase the overall level of educational spending statewide and create educational freedom for families whose only option today is to attend the schools to which they are assigned by the local district’s bureaucrats.

An effective solution to the educational crisis is at our fingertips. All we have to do is grasp it.