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April 15, 2024 |  By: Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

Missouri treasurer pushes back on legislative criticism of MoScholars data transparency

vivek malek

By Annelise Hanshaw - Missouri Independent

Lawmakers are raising concerns about what they believe is a lack of transparency in Missouri’s nearly two-year old private school tax credit program.

The administrator of the MOScholars program, State Treasurer Vivek Malek, says the criticism is misplaced, arguing lawmakers are making overly broad requests for data in a manner that is taxing the small staff in the treasurer’s office.

And the debate is playing out as the GOP-run legislature seeks to expand the program to make it available to more students, both by raising the income threshold and permitting its use statewide.

“It is honestly getting very difficult to get any information out of the treasurer’s office at all,” state Sen. Andrew Koenig, a Republican from Manchester who is running against Malek in the GOP primary, said during a Senate debate last month.

The criticism began during a Senate committee hearing on a MOScholars expansion bill in January. Democrats on the committee asked Malek and his staff about program demographics, information they argued has been murky.

“We’re having a hard time getting information,” state Sen. Tracy McCreery, a Democrat from Olivette, said during the hearing. “Do you have any thoughts on if the schools that are receiving the voucher plans should also be subject to Sunshine Law, just like other educational institutions?”

Malek told Democrats: “I can assure you my office will provide you those answers within 48 hours.”

State Sen. Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat, asked for data on the program before the January hearing and received a screenshot of a webpage with basic demographic information.

“After I asked for all the data, (a staff member) sent me a screenshot of a website,” Beck said. “That’s why I went off in the meeting. Like, this is crap.”

According to emails obtained by The Independent, Beck on Jan. 7 asked for “all the data you have compiled on the MO Scholars program.” He did not cite Missouri’s Sunshine Law, which outlines procedures for public records requests.

Ray Bozarth, Malek’s chief of staff,  responded, writing: “It’s my understanding you may have some questions regarding the MOScholars program. How may I help you?”

Kern Chhikara, Malek’s spokesman, told The Independent the treasurer’s office had to guess what Beck wanted because of the broad nature of his request.

“Sen. Beck asked vaguely for ‘all the data,’ and we interpreted that request as all the key metrics for the program,” Chhikara said. “When Sen. Beck complained about the data we provided him, we promptly followed up with data that was responsive to some of the various questions and concerns he expressed in a hearing.”

Immediately following the committee hearing, Bozarth sent a spreadsheet that answered questions Beck had, like how many students previously attended private schools before receiving MOScholars funding. Beck still has unanswered questions.

In the program’s first enrollment class, 33% of students had attended private school prior to receiving the scholarship, 36% attended public school, 24% were entering kindergarten or first grade and were thereby not counted as attending private or public schools previously. 

The remaining students were educated at home or in charter schools.

Beck is particularly concerned with the number of students who are receiving the money, which is rerouted from the state’s general fund, to pay for a private school they were already attending.

Koenig told The Independent he asked for data such as program enrollment by school, student demographics and student testing data. He never received the data showing which schools students attend. The Independent obtained a file with that information from the treasurer’s office in November.

In a statement to The Independent, Chhikara said the office only recalls Koenig’s request for performance data. A report on student performance must be publicly available, by state law, after the third year of the program, which would be next year.

The office has the raw data, but it does not have the staff required to generate a report.

“The legislature wrote the bill to require students to take a state achievement test or a nationally norm-referenced test. The problem here is that there are a lot of different norm referenced tests,” Chhikara told The Independent. “The large amount of eligible tests for students to take resulted in diversely formatted testing data being submitted to the State Treasurer’s Office.”

The sheer volume of testing data, and the diverse formatting, would require a full-time employee to learn software that could be used to aggregate the data, Chhikara said. 

 “We do not have the staff capacity to handle such a task,” he said, “which is why we had planned on posting the position this summer. If legislators want testing data provided sooner, they could change the statute.”

Koenig said he received some data but hoped to get more so that he could compare program participants to public-school test scores.

“I would have hoped that they would have done a little bit of work on that,” Koenig said, “because they would have at least gotten one year of data by May of last year.” 

The State Treasurer’s Office has 49 employees, according to the state’s accountability portal, with some not working any hours in the last pay period. In 2020, prior to the creation of MOScholar, the treasurer’s office had 51 employees on its books.

Malek has been at the helm of the operation since January of 2023, after Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to fill the vacancy left when Scott Fitzpatrick was elected state auditor. 

Much of the staff under Fitzpatrick followed him to the auditor’s office.

Beck said he never asked the office for information when Fitzpatrick was treasurer.

“I actually have more confidence that (Fitzpatrick) knew what was going on,” Beck said.

It is unclear whether Malek was aware of lawmakers’ difficulties with the office. Chhikara said he doesn’t know which inquiries staff members briefed Malek on.

“Generally,” he said, “staff keep (Malek) informed about media and legislator inquiries.”