Under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states must identify unsafe schools and notify families of students who attend them that they have the right to move their child to a safer public school. This requirement is called the Unsafe School Choice Option (USCO). In Missouri, it isn’t working. The problem comes down to one word in state policy.

Right now, Missouri only classifies a school as unsafe if it has a high rate of violence and a high number of expulsions for three years in a row. Because expulsions almost never happen, the conditions are almost impossible to meet. As a result, no school is ever designated as unsafe, and families aren’t allowed to transfer out.

Changing one word, from “AND” to “OR,” would finally make the rule work the way federal law intended.

What doesn’t work

Since the law passed, there have been nearly 19,000 violent incidences in Missouri schools and over 4,000 weapons violations. In 2024, more than 12,200 Missouri students attended schools that had at least one violent incident in each of three consecutive years, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Even with these numbers, the state has not identified a single school as unsafe.

Missouri schools expelled zero students in 2024 and only five students in 2023. With so few expulsions, the Unsafe School Choice Option almost never applies, even in schools with serious safety problems.

The simple fix: change one word

In places like Poplar Bluff, University City, and the City of St. Louis, students face serious safety problems each year, yet their families have never been told about their rights.

Missouri should replace the word and with or.
A school should be designated unsafe if it has serious violence, or a high expulsion rate, or weapons violations.

This one change would help families learn when a school is unsafe and allow them to use the transfer option that federal law gives them.

More About the USCO

This one-pager explains how Missouri’s overly narrow definition leaves families without the protections ESSA guarantees and outlines steps policymakers can take to fix it.