House panel seeks success in creating higher ed performance-based funding plan

      A House effort to arrive at a successful performance-based model for funding the state’s colleges and universities launched on Tuesday.

Representative Brenda Shields (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      The House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding held an introductory hearing, in which it heard several presentations about the past attempts at performance-based funding. 

      Committee Chair Brenda Shields (R-St. Joseph) said it’s important to know what’s come before.

      “This has been attempted several times.  We haven’t been successful,” Shields said.

      She said if there is to be a chance for a better result this time, everyone must have a seat at the table.

      “It’s going to require us to engage all the stakeholders.  That’s all of our universities and our community colleges, all of our institutes of higher education along with the [Department of Higher Education] to be able for us to be successful in developing a formula that actually has a measurement model to it.  How do we know how we’re performing if we don’t have measurements?  So that’s what we’re really looking for, is how can we measure our fixed costs, the variable costs, and then our performance funding on top of that, so that our universities actually know what they’re working towards.”

Representative Kevin Windham (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Shields said if not all of the state’s institutions have buy-in, any new formula will be doomed. 

      “If [a legislator] doesn’t feel as if their individual university that they represent is happy, they will vote against it, or I believe I will vote against it if my university felt as if they were not receiving fair funding.  I would vote against it and it would bring the people of my region against it, and it’s really hard to pass a formula unless you feel as if everyone is a winner somewhere in that formula.”

      What the legislature is using now in setting higher education funding is a “base plus” model, but Shields said no one has been able to tell her where that base came from.

      “Every year, if the legislature thinks that we can afford a three-percent increase, we use the current base and we add three percent to it.  First of all, nobody can explain how the base was created.  Secondly, it doesn’t take into account that things have changed, so we give everybody a three percent increase based on their base and maybe their student enrollment has increased dramatically.  Maybe it’s decreased dramatically.  Maybe they’ve taken on teaching some degrees that are more expensive to offer … and we haven’t taken any of that into account.  We just continue to add a percent to this base number that no one can remember how it was created.”

MU System President Mun Choi addresses the House Special Interim Committee on Higher Education Performance Funding (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Tuesday’s hearing set the Department of Higher Education to the task of creating a work group with representation from all the institutions of higher education in the state. 

      “They will begin to sit down and break down what’s the fixed cost.  Let’s define ‘fixed costs,’ what are your fixed costs, what are the variable costs of running an institution, and then of course, what should be our measurements for a performance funding model?  They will agree upon what those measurements are and then we’ll move from there.”

      Shields said the goal is not to pass a new funding mechanism in the 2025 legislative session.

      “What our hope is for the ’25 session is that we have a system in place which we can test and simulate and make tweaks to, and so we will spend the entire ’25 session making tweaks.  I do not believe that we’ll pass legislation in ’25.  I think the soonest that we’ll pass legislation will be in ’26 for use in ’27.”

      The committee will meet three more times this year.

VIDEO: Norm Stewart Inducted into Hall of Famous Missourians

The latest inductee into the Hall of Famous Missourians is Norm Stewart, a man whose name is synonymous with Mizzou basketball. 

Norm Stewart stands next to his newly-unveiled bust that has been added to the Hall of Famous Missourians. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Norman Eugene “Norm” Stewart coached the University of Missouri basketball team for over three decades.  He played at Mizzou from 1952-1956 before briefly pursuing professional baseball and basketball and coaching at the University of Northern Iowa. Stewart’s 32-year tenure at Mizzou yielded 734 wins, eight Big Eight titles, and 16 NCAA Tournament appearances, earning him Coach of the Year honors.

Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1989, he founded Coaches Vs. Cancer, a renowned initiative that has raised millions of dollars in the ongoing fight against cancer.  Today, Norm Stewart remains a beloved figure in the Mizzou community, his legacy serving as a constant source of inspiration for Tigers past, present, and future.

“I really am so proud to be a Missourian and to join such an illustrious class of people,” Stewart said of being inducted into the Hall.  “It just makes you feel so good, it makes me feel so good … to join such an illustrious group.”

Stewart was chosen as an inductee to the Hall by House Speaker Dean Plocher (R-St. Louis), who said “Today … we celebrate more than championships and victories.  We honor a man whose legacy of passion and excellence inspires us all.  Norm Stewart:  forever a Tiger, forever a legend.”

Stewart was born in 1935 in Leonard, Missouri, a village that at the time had fewer than 200 residents.  He said he spent the first five years of his life in a one-bedroom home with three siblings before the family moved to nearby Shelbyville.  They didn’t have running water until he was a sophomore in high school. 

“I say this humorously but I really think maybe some of it’s true.  The reason I liked basketball was I got to take a shower … we did not have running water until I was a sophomore in high school.  Up until that time you heated your water, put it in a pan, and you took your bath, usually on Saturday.  If you had a bad week you got one on Wednesday, also.”

Virginia Stewart is recognized by her husband, Norm, at his induction into the Hall of Famous Missourians. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Stewart thanked and praised his family, particularly his wife. 

“Like the preacher who went on and on about how good a person was, who had just passed away, and his neighbor got up and said, ‘Reverend, you’re talking about the wrong person.’  You’ve been talking about the wrong person here.  The person that should be [in the Hall of Famous Missourians] is this little girl here, Virginia.”

Stewart said no matter where basketball took him, while he loved visiting other parts of the country, he was always proud to be from Missouri. 

“In Missouri, ‘Pretty good’ … is a hell of a compliment, whereas if you go to New York or LA or something, the guy’s ‘great,’ ‘Oh, he’s fantastic,’ ‘He’s wonderful,’ ‘He’s out of sight!’  You know you’re on top in Missouri when they say, ‘Hey, he’s pretty good.’”

Panel wants Missouri to apply for first Hyperloop certification track (VIDEO)

Missouri should be first state to apply for to have a high-speed Hyperloop system built within its borders.  That’s the recommendation released today from the Special Blue Ribbon Panel on Hyperloop formed by Missouri House Speaker Elijah Haahr (R-Springfield).

The Panel wants Missouri to be first in building a national certification track.  It would be the first step toward seeing a Hyperloop connection between Kansas City and St. Louis, offering passengers a trip between the two in less than 30 minutes.

Haahr said the Hyperloop would keep Missouri at the forefront of transportation technology developments and revolutionize the movement of passengers and freight across the state, while opening up the possibility for ultra-fast travel to other locations in the country in the future.  It is also projected that it would reduce fatalities in I-70 as well as carbon emissions.

The test track would cost between $300-million and $500-million.

Learn more about the Panel’s proposal by watching the conference presented today on the University of Missouri campus:

Budget subcommittee chair to recommend delay in basing college, university funding on performance

The Chair of the House subcommittee that deals with education funding says he will recommend the legislature put off a performance-based funding mechanism for state-supported colleges and universities.

University of Missouri System President Mun Choi testifies to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education on January 31, 2018. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Cedarcreek Republican Lyle Rowland’s subcommittee heard from those institutions’ presidents over the course of two days and said many of them wanted the same things:  a delay in implementation of that plan, and a restoration of their core funding.

The state budget proposed last month by Governor Eric Greitens (R) would cut higher education funding by 10-percent, or roughly $100-million, from its Fiscal Year 2018 level.  Also in early January, the Coordinating Board for Higher Education approved linking 10-percent of funding for publicly-backed colleges and universities to performance factors such as students’ job placement, degree completion, and budgetary practices.  The model would look back at institutions’ performance over the past three years.

The combination means it is possible, though unlikely, that any given institution could see a decrease of as much as 20-percent in year-to-year state support.

Rowland said he agrees with the institution presidents who told him implementing performance-based funding now puts them at a disadvantage.

“[Institutions] didn’t know what their standards were going to be.  They didn’t know how to change their operation of their colleges and universities to help meet those goals,” said Rowland.  “With them not knowing what standards were, what those areas of concern are going to be, they have no way of implementing it, so it was going to hurt them financially.  We don’t want to hurt them financially.”

He wants to postpone that plan for three years so that institutions will know what areas to work on before their support is tied to them.

“We want to give them the opportunity to build up before we start with the funding model and then let’s put x-amount of new dollars into performance funding then and if you’re not meeting it you’re not going to get all of that funding.  We’re going to redistribute that to the other schools and universities.”

Rowland’s panel on Wednesday heard from University of Missouri System President Mun Choi, who touted to lawmakers the system’s accomplishments but coupled that with words of caution.

He said 90-percent of Mizzou’s students found a job within six months or moved on to graduate school; research is yielding advancements in the agriculture and medical fields; and Missouri S&T last summer beat out other universities from around the world in a competition to design a Mars rover.

“Those kinds of stories are peppered throughout all of our campuses but our ability to continue these programs is in jeopardy because of the cuts that we’ve experienced,” said Choi.

Lincoln University Interim President Michael Middleton echoed Choi’s call for a restoration of core funding and a delay in the performance model.

Representative Lyle Rowland (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“We are about as lean as we can be.  We’re already seeing that giving multiple responsibilities to individuals affects our productivity, which I believe is reflected in the number of students we’re able to recruit and retain,” said Middleton.  “With this [proposed] additional wave of cuts we are in a perfect storm with no clear break in the clouds.”

As for the proposed cut to core funding, Rowland said the governor’s proposal is not likely to stand, but given the state’s overall economic picture some reduction is probable.

“I’m sure there will be some cuts.  What we’re trying to do is try to make it as little as possible,” said Rowland.  “We’re hoping to be able to locate some things [elsewhere in the state budget] that we might be able to transfer into higher ed.”

The ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Kip Kendrick (Columbia), has been one of several lawmakers expressing concern about the timing of performance-based funding.  He thinks most legislators will agree it should be pushed back.

“Higher education institutions across the board were on the same message about this, whether they were going to receive an additional hit from the performance funding model or not,” said Kendrick.  “Everybody was very tepid in having that implemented in a year where there is a potential for up to 10-percent of additional cuts to higher education.  We can’t penalize institutions on top of the additional cuts that they’re receiving this year.  It’s way too punitive and not the right year to implement it.”

Rowland will submit his recommendation to the full budget committee.  That committee will develop its own state budget proposal to be considered by the full House.  Eventually the House and Senate will have to agree on a state spending plan to be sent to the governor.

Task Force on Dyslexia issues recommendations for dyslexia screenings of Missouri students

A Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia has completed its work and released recommendations for having Missouri public school students screened for dyslexia.

Representative Kathy Swan (left) listens as Kim Stuckey, Director of Dyslexia Specialists at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, discusses the report of the Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia. (photo; Chris Moreland, Missouri House Communications)

The Task Force’s report to legislative leaders and the governor recommends that all students in kindergarten through grade three be screened for dyslexia and related disorders beginning in the 2018-19 school year.  It also recommends that students who have not been previously screened, and who have been identified as “struggling” in literacy, be screened.

The Task Force was chaired by Cape Girardeau representative Kathy Swan (R), who said early identification of reading difficulties is key to helping children get the education they need.

“By identifying and addressing this reading failure, students will not only be successful in school but successful in life.  If our children do not learn to read they will, and cannot, read to learn,” said Swan.  “This small investment today will have long-term benefits for not only students and families but for the economic and social benefits of our communities and for our state.”

It is also recommended that schools require two hours of in-service training in assessing reading difficulties.  Currently schools are required only to offer such training.

Swan said it is also important that Missouri colleges’ and universities’ teacher education programs address dyslexia characteristics, identification, and intervention.

Task Force member Erica Lembke chairs the Department of Special Education at the University of Missouri.  She said she is excited about what the recommendations could mean for teacher education programs.

Erica Lembke, chair of the Department of Special Education at the University of Missouri, comments on the report of the Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia. (photo; Chris Moreland, Missouri House Communications)

“It’s critically important that this content is delivered and infused in our teacher preparation courses at the colleges and universities in Missouri,” said Lembke.

The Task Force’s report says the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) should recommend a process for universal screening that includes a multi-tiered support system.  It stresses that districts should make clear to parents that a positive screening for dyslexia is not a diagnosis.

The Task Force was created with the passage of House Bill 2379 in 2016.  It required that public schools in Missouri screen for dyslexia and related disorders, and established that DESE would develop rules for screenings based on the Task Force’s recommendations.

Earlier story:  Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia holds first hearing, Rep. Swan selected as chair

House refuses additional reductions to MU in higher education budget

The state House has finalized its proposed budget for state aid to colleges and universities for the fiscal year that begins July 1.  Another favorable vote will send that plan to the Senate for its consideration.

House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

That plan would reduce funding to the University of Missouri by 9-percent, or $50-million, compared to the current fiscal year.  This was part of a reduction across all higher education due to the need to reduce spending.  Lawmakers blocked on Tuesday attempts to take additional money from MU.  House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) urged legislators to not seek to penalize MU over its handling of racial tensions, as many sought to do during last year’s budget debates.

“I don’t like any more than any of you do some of the things that have happened over the last year-and-a-half at the University.  That being said, there is a new president at the institution.  He has already started implementing changes.  I think that a little over 9-percent cut to their operating budget in one year is pretty significant,” said Fitzpatrick.  “I think that if we continue to cut the University of Missouri system the message that we are sending across the state is that we’re going beyond punitive reductions at that point.  At that point I think we’re sending the message that we are expecting the University to raise tuition to make up the difference that we are going to be causing here if we continue to go down this path.”

Some lawmakers still wanted to take more from MU.  Ash Grove Republican Mike Moon wanted to take $1-million from the University to promote tourism.

“One thing that keeps ringing in my mind is $2-million in hidden bonuses that were uncovered by the state auditor,” said Moon, referring to a recent finding regarding the university.  “Maybe I should’ve been more diligent and directed where that money be taken, and maybe salaries need to be looked at.  These bonuses, though, have to stop,” said Moon.

Moon’s amendment was rejected.

The House also rejected attempts to redirect money that goes toward Lincoln University’s land grant status and the federal dollars that come with it.  This was of particular importance to Democrats, including the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, Michael Butler (D-St. Louis).

“We are in danger again this year for a university in the State of Missouri losing those matching funds,” said Butler.  “A lot of work on both sides of the aisle has gone into this.  We’re very happy with the result even though we’re still $3.6-million away [from where we’d like to be].” 

Democrats attempted to remove language in the higher education budget that blocks state money from going to higher education institutions that offer less than the international tuition rate, or scholarships, to students lacking lawful immigration status.

Kansas City Democrat Lauren Arthur called that language punitive, and said it often hurts students who entered the country not by choice but with their parents.

“We passed this language a few years ago and we’ve seen two outcomes for these students.  First, they can’t afford to go to college so they don’t … or, they decide to go to college outside of this state, where we lose an individual who is a contributing member of society,” said Arthur.

Fitzpatrick said Missouri must, “prioritize the citizens of the state, and for that matter the United States, when we look at who’s going to pay the lowest rate of tuition … “This was never an issue until the federal government administratively granted lawful presence – not lawful immigration status; they still have an unlawful immigration status – but when they administratively granted lawful presence to people who were here illegally.”

Arthur’s amendment was rejected.

The higher education budget is laid out in House Bill 3.  The House is expected to vote Thursday on whether to send that and the rest of its proposed state budget to the Senate.

House proposal seeks move of historic African American’s collection to Smithsonian

Historic documents related to a key figure in African Americans’ struggle for equal opportunity in education should be elevated to a national stage, according to a state representative.

Lloyd Gaines (Gaines Family Archive, University of Missouri Law School)
Lloyd Gaines (Gaines Family Archive, University of Missouri Law School)

Representative Joshua Peters (D-St. Louis) is offering a resolution that would urge the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators to transfer the Lloyd Gaines collection to the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1936 Gaines applied for admission to the University of Missouri law school.  He was denied admission based on his race, and the state offered to pay the additional cost Gaines would incur to study law out of state, as was the state’s policy at the time.  Gaines declined and sued.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gaines’ favor, saying that the “separate but equal” doctrine of the time demanded that Gaines either be admitted to the University of Missouri or that the state create a separate school for African American students.

The state chose the latter course, and created the Lincoln University School of Law in St. Louis.

Peters says Gaines’ case led to the Brown vs. Board of Education case in Topeka, Kansas, which found the “separate but equal” practice of separating white and black students was inherently unequal, and unconstitutional.

“In Thurgood Marshall’s autobiography he wrote that if it was not for the Gaines vs. Canada case, he would not have been able to defend or to advocate for Brown vs. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas,” said Peters.  “It truly has a national impact.  It’s the premise that was used to really change America’s educational system.”

After the Lincoln University School of Law was established, the NAACP was preparing to file a lawsuit challenging its adequacy.  Around that time Gaines disappeared.  What happened to him remains unknown.

Gary Kremer, the Executive Director of the State Historical Society, said Gaines’ disappearance is a lingering mystery of the civil rights movement.

“It’s hard to imagine that more than seven decades later that he would have vanished without a trace unless there was some foul play,” said Kremer.

Representative Josh Peters (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Representative Josh Peters (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Peters wants to see Gaines’ documents preserved and displayed at the national level.

“I think that anyone who knows about Mr. Gaines knows the impact that he had when it comes to law,” said Peters.

The Lloyd Gaines collection at the University of Missouri includes the letters Gaines wrote applying for admission, and the University’s responses denying his application due to his race.

Gaines has since been honored by the University, which named its Black Culture Center and a law scholarship for him and another African American student who was denied admission.  In 2006 he was granted an honorary law degree, followed by the Missouri Bar Association issuing him a posthumous law license.  Gaines’ portrait hangs in the University of Missouri law school building.

Peters’ resolution is HR 11.