Children Have a Right to a Safe Place to Learn

The U.S. Department of Education recently reminded states that under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), students must be given the option to transfer if their school is deemed “persistently dangerous.” ESSA requires each state to define what constitutes a persistently dangerous school, collect relevant data, and implement policies that allow students in such schools to move to safer alternatives.

This reminder came because most states are effectively ignoring the requirement. In 2024 only 25 schools nationwide were identified as persistently dangerous—15 of them in Arkansas alone. Missouri, despite ranking 50th in a recent analysis of School Safety, has never identified a single such school.

Missouri does have a definition on the books. Part of the definition is that a school must have an “act of school violence,” “violent behavior,” or a gun-free-schools violation in three consecutive years.  Unfortunately, there is plenty of violence and violent behavior in Missouri schools. For instance, there were 128 weapons violations and 335 violent incidents reported in Missouri schools just last year. A school safety hotline reported that they received nearly 1,600 tips of safety threats, including physical assault, threats to kill, guns, and drugs.

Yet there’s a catch. For a school to be labeled persistently dangerous in Missouri, it must also have more than five expulsions in two of three consecutive years (or more than 10 if the school enrolls over 250 students). However, schools can control expulsions and DESE data indicate that there were no expulsions of any student in the entire state in 2021, 2023, and 2024. Just 10 occurred in 2022. Meanwhile, nearly 13,500 students received out-of-school suspensions lasting 10 or more days last year.

Does it seem reasonable that no student in the entire state was expelled last year?

It is a policy failure that no schools in Missouri are classified as persistently dangerous, despite clear indications to the contrary. By allowing schools to manipulate their data—and in particular, to avoid expulsions at all costs—we are allowing them to circumvent the law. And the law exists for a good reason: to give students trapped in unsafe environments a real chance at success.

Parents have the right to expect their children will come home safely from school each day.  For children assigned to local schools that are persistently dangerous, ESSA is supposed to provide the opportunity to change schools. Missouri’s failure to take the law seriously has permitted persistently dangerous schools to operate without taking on the formal designation, and is a disservice to the children and families who are trapped in these schools.