Riverview Gardens and Normandy Are Regaining Local Control
After a decade of state control, the Missouri Board of Education recently announced it will restore local control to two...
An Update on MOSchoolRankings
The Show-Me Institute has added 2021–22 academic data to the MOSchoolRankings.org website. Now, users can see three years of academic...
Should More Missouri Students Be Held Back?
Around the country, states are considering implementing policies that would hold back a larger number of 3rd graders who are...
Missouri Students Are Sadly Still Struggling
Recently, DESE released the preliminary results of the 2023 Missouri Assessment Program (MAP), and the results were bad enough to...
20 Missouri Districts Get the Green Light to Try New Assessment System
New beginnings are in the air in Missouri. Some families are sending their children off to college for the first...
Residential Assignment, No School Choice: A Terrible System
Recently, I presented a paper at a conference in Madrid, Spain. The conference brought together education scholars from across Europe,...
20 Missouri Districts Seek Exemption from the Missouri Assessment Program
At the most recent state board of education meeting, 20 school districts requested a federal waiver to be exempt from...
WATCH: Jason L. Riley on the Life of Thomas Sowell
On April 19, 2023 the Show-Me Institute hosted Jason L. Riley, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and columnist for...
Missouri Charter Schools Top the Academic Growth Charts
The first report from the Missouri School Improvement Program 6 (MSIP 6) was released recently, providing data on how each...
Expanding the VIP List for Charter School Eligibility
In Missouri, only a select few are eligible for the VIP status of charter school eligibility. The “bouncer” until recently...
Statewide Trends and the “Teacher Shortage”
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recently released demographic and faculty data for 2022. Given the current headlines...
House Bill 190 and the Teacher Shortage
House Bill (HB) 190 is on the move in the Missouri House of Representatives, as it is now being debated...
WSJ Takes Aim at Illinois, Ignores Missouri
The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial that expressed legitimate shock about the relationship between teacher ratings and rates...
This Is What Number Four Looks Like?
By now, we have all seen that wonderful photo of the young child sitting in the backseat of her parents’...
The Suspense Isn’t Exactly Killing Me
I guess we should be concerned that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is keeping their district...
Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights
Introducing the Missouri Parents’ Bill of Rights Too often, local officials have resisted oversight of Missouri public schools and districts....
If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It
Some things are hard to face—the scale, your checking account balance—but ignoring them doesn’t make problems magically go away. The...
Troubling Test Results for Missouri Students
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) just released preliminary test scores from last year. We finally have...
Local Gas Taxes Are the Secret Garden of City Road Funding Options
A version of this commentary appeared in the Columbia Tribune. When troubled or sickly aristocratic English youth needed a place to...
Where Are the Kindergartners?
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on December 8, 2020. According to enrollment counts taken...
