Click here to read the full testimony.

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House Bill 2274: Increasing Mobility for Teachers

On January 15, Show-Me Institute Senior Policy Analyst Avery Frank submits testimony to the Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee regarding an interstate teacher mobility compact.

To the Honorable Members of This Committee

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Avery Frank. I am a senior policy analyst at the ShowMe Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, Missouri-based think tank that advances sensible, well-researched, free-market solutions to state and local policy issues. The ideas presented here are my own and are offered in consideration of fostering flexibility in Missouri’s public education system.

Reducing Uncertainty for Out-of-State Teachers

In 2020, Missouri adopted a form of universal licensing reciprocity allowing most licensed professionals (with some exceptions) who have held a valid license issued by another state for at least one year to practice in Missouri at the same occupation or level, meaning that they would have Missouri examination, educational, or experience licensing requirements waived.¹

Teachers are among the many licensed professions in Missouri, and this reciprocity regime is beneficial as it currently stands. However, uncertainty remains for many out-of-state teachers who may seek to relocate to Missouri. For example, which Missouri teaching license is equivalent to their current out-of-state license?² Additionally, existing statute allows relevant licensing authorities up to six months to issue a licensing waiver.³ Together, these uncertainties can reduce Missouri’s attractiveness as a place to move and teach.

House Bill 2274 would establish the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact in order to address these challenges. If enacted, the compact would require each participating state to create and maintain a list of licenses it is willing to consider for equivalency. This would help teachers more clearly understand their potential teaching options and reduce uncertainty when considering relocation.

The interstate commission created by the compact would primarily function as a clearinghouse, or central information-sharing hub, for licensure and disciplinary information. Each state would retain full authority over who is licensed within its borders and under what conditions. While Missouri already provides a broad pathway for recognizing many out-of-state licenses, the compact would provide additional transparency and consistency that could make the state more attractive to prospective teachers.

Helping Address Teacher Shortages in High-Need Subject Areas and Schools

Missouri’s teacher shortage has received significant attention in recent years⁴. A closer examination of the state’s pipeline and hiring trends suggests that Missouri does not face a broad, statewide shortage of teachers. Instead, shortages are concentrated in specific subject areas and in particular high-need, challenged districts.⁵ 

For example, between the 2017–18 and 2021–22 school years, the Hickman Mills C-1 school district reported a substantially higher percentage of vacant teaching positions than other Kansas City–area noncharter public school districts—more than five times higher than the second-highest district, Kansas City 33.⁶

While the compact alone will not provide a targeted solution to these types of deficiencies, it should improve Missouri’s overall teacher pipeline by making it easier for qualified out-of-state teachers to fill vacancies in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas, such as special education or physics. Kansas is already a member of this compact, and facilitating mobility for teachers living near the Kansas–Missouri border could benefit western Missouri districts in particular.⁷

Conclusion

House Bill 2274 offers an opportunity for Missouri to continue leading on occupational licensing reform while modestly improving access to qualified teachers in areas of greatest need. For these reasons, this bill could help make Missouri a better place to teach and live.

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Missouri’s foundation formula for funding school districts is outdated. It allocates too much state aid to some property-rich districts because it relies on outdated information about property values. Because of hold-harmless provisions, it also sends money to some districts for students who aren’t there. Finally, the formula provides additional funding for some categories of high-need students but does so in an unnecessarily complex and arbitrary manner.

The Solution

Revise the Missouri foundation formula to reflect updated property values, phase out outdated hold-harmless provisions responsibly, and provide additional funding to high-need students in a simple and transparent way.

Key Facts

• The formula is designed to equalize funding between property-poor and property-rich districts, but it uses outdated property values to determine local communities’ wealth levels, distorting funding calculations.

• It includes multiple hold-harmless provisions that misallocate resources by providing funding for students who are not enrolled.

• The formula provides additional funding for certain high-need student groups, but does so in a complex and arbitrary manner.

The Formula Is Stuck in the Past

Missouri’s school funding formula is not designed for 2025 and beyond. It was enacted in 2005 and should be updated to reflect the modern context of public education in Missouri. The formula has three central problems.

First, as in other states, the Missouri formula aims to send more funding to poorer areas by adjusting for local revenue capacity. It does this through an expectation of local tax effort from all communities, with the idea being that at similar property tax rates, wealthier areas can raise more revenue locally. The problem is that the Missouri formula determines the expected local effort based on property values as of 2005. Changes in local wealth over the past two decades are not reflected, resulting in distorted estimates of local capacity and misallocated state aid.

Second, the formula has several hold-harmless provisions that have outlived their usefulness. Hold-harmless provisions are typically used to ease the transition from an old formula to a new one, but Missouri’s provisions have been in place for decades. Seventy-five percent of small districts receive the same amount of funding that they received in 2005, rather than the amount calculated by the formula based on actual enrollment today, because the 2005 amount is higher.

Third, while the formula includes extra funding for students with disabilities, low-income students, and English learners, the calculation mechanism is overly complicated. For example, when the number of students from a particular category exceeds a threshold level, the district receives additional funding for every student above the threshold. But if the percentage of students is below the threshold, the district receives no additional funding. A more tractable and modern approach is to simply provide additional funding for each high-need student in the formula.

An additional benefit of modernizing how we provide additional funding for high-need students is that each student’s funding level under the formula will be clearly identified. This will make it easier for state funding to follow students to schools of their choice as Missouri’s school choice landscape improves.

Policy Recommendations

• Draft a new foundation formula based on current student counts and updated local effort measures. The new formula should also include built-in mechanisms for regular updates to property values and student counts.

• Target additional funding to students based on their needs in a simple and transparent way.

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Too many Missouri students are struggling to read at all grade levels.

The Solution

Adopt evidence-based early literacy policies that have a proven track record in other states.

Key Facts

• On the 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress, 42% of Missouri fourth-graders scored “below basic” in reading, up from 30% in 2015.

• Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores have not returned to prepandemic levels.

A Key Study on Early Literacy

John Westall and Amy Cummings at Michigan State University released a comprehensive national analysis of state early literacy policies in 2023 in which they identified 16 policies that consistently showed evidence of improving literacy. States with all 16 saw significant and sustained increases in reading scores, indicating a path forward for Missouri.

Third-Grade Retention for Struggling Readers

Westall and Cummings found no evidence that reading scores increase without a retention policy to hold back struggling readers.

Missouri technically has a form of third-grade retention on the books, but it is not based on objective academic benchmarks, and it is rarely used.

In the fourth grade, reading instruction shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. Students who cannot read effectively struggle to keep up. While retention is a difficult experience, it is less so when the retention occurs early, and research shows that retained students do benefit. Ideally, prospective fourth-grade students would take a state literacy assessment for reading. Those who do not meet the established reading benchmark would receive summer remediation and another chance to pass the test.

Good-cause exceptions could be made for some students. In other states, these include students with some types of disabilities, English language learners, and previously retained students.

Elimination of the Three-Cueing Method

Three-cueing is an approach to teaching reading that relies on text (the letters on the page) as little as possible and instead uses language cues.

However, reading is not an intuitive skill—rather, it is a technique to be learned. Research shows that skilled readers learn to read each letter rapidly and fluently as they connect the letters’ sounds with their oral vocabulary (phonics instruction). Three-cueing relies more on how the “whole word” looks, along with other context, like pictures. Fluency and decoding, rather than guessing and memorization, should define reading instruction.

Last year, Senate Bill 68 came close to banning three-cueing instruction. It needs to be fully eliminated in classrooms.

Align Teacher Preparation Programs

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released a report on how well teacher preparation programs across the country teach the science of reading. Half of Missouri’s participating universities received an “F.”

Indiana requires programs that certify teachers to include science-of-reading content and prohibit three-cueing. Missouri should follow suit.

Policy Recommendations

• Establish a mandatory third-grade retention program based on objective academic benchmarks with multiple opportunities and good-cause exceptions.

• Fully eliminate the three-cueing method.

• Ensure that Missouri’s teacher preparation programs train prospective teachers in the science of reading.

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Missouri parents don’t have access to accurate and easy-to-understand information about the quality of their children’s schools.

The Solution

Mandate the creation of transparent online school report cards (with an easy-to-interpret rating system, such as letter grades) that clearly communicate measures of school quality to parents and community members.

Key Facts

• The federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires every state to publish report cards on schools and districts. High-quality school report cards help parents make informed choices and help states prioritize schools for academic improvement interventions.

• The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has no rating system for schools or districts, and the information it shares is not provided in a way that is useful to parents or policymakers.

Parents Are Being Kept in the Dark

When done well, school report cards are a powerful tool for communicating school performance to parents. According to a 2019 Phi Delta Kappa survey, 66% of parents who are aware of school report cards read them, and of those, 82% find them useful.

Federal law requires the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to produce report cards for every school and district in the state. While DESE has technically met this requirement, the current report cards are not useful. They provide a lot of data, but they do not label the data clearly or give context in which to understand the data.

What Missouri needs are clear, parent-friendly report cards that provide straightforward ratings across key performance indicators. These should include student proficiency and growth in English/language arts and math, with results disaggregated by student subgroup. This is not uncharted territory. Much is known about what makes a school report card useful, relevant, and easy to understand, and many other states already produce high-quality school report cards. Missouri doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel here. We simply need to follow the example set by states that have done this well. It is no coincidence that states with clear and transparent school report cards tend to significantly outperform Missouri on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

In 2021, the Show-Me Institute created its own website, MOSchoolRankings.org, with letter grades for all schools and districts in the state. Ideally, the legislature would require DESE to create something similar.

Policy Recommendation

• Mandate the design and creation of a transparent online school report card system that clearly communicates measures of school quality to parents and community members, including an easy-to-interpret rating system such as letter grades, for every school and district. The report cards should be mobile- and print-friendly.

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The school choice landscape in Missouri is improving, but most students are still limited to narrow district offerings.

The Solution

Fully commit to a modern school-choice landscape by requiring all school districts to participate in statewide interdistrict open enrollment, increase funding for the MOScholars program, and remove barriers to charter schools in any school district where demand exists.

Key Facts

• Because Missouri does not offer interdistrict school choice, students here are required to attend a school assigned to them based on their address, even if that school chronically underperforms academically or is persistently dangerous.
• As it is currently funded, the MOScholars program can provide scholarships for only about 20,000 of Missouri’s 880,000 public school students.
• Students have access to charter schools in just three of Missouri’s more than 500 school districts.

Interdistrict Choice

Under Kansas’s new interdistrict open enrollment law, every K-12 student can attend any public school in the state, regardless of where they live, as long as there are available seats in the desired school. School districts must participate in the program, and the Kansas Department of Education audits each district’s capacity annually to ensure compliance. Missouri students are largely denied this level of educational choice. In most cases, they are required to attend the school assigned to them based on their home address. In 2024, the Reason Foundation graded all states’ public school transfer and open enrollment laws, and Missouri received an “F.” There are many reasons why a family might want an alternative to their assigned school. The school could be too big or too small, a child may face bullying, or the school might not be able to meet the terms of an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Another issue that has come into focus of late is school safety—new federal guidance emphasizes that students who attend persistently dangerous schools must be provided with an opportunity to attend a safe public school.

Missouri students should be permitted to cross district lines to access any public school, and Missouri school districts should be required both to allow students to transfer out and to receive students from other districts when they have space. Information on available capacity should be posted on school and district web pages and monitored by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Expanding the MOScholars Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) Program

MOScholars, Missouri’s private school choice program, provides scholarships for students with disabilities and for low- and middle-income families to attend private schools. These scholarships are distributed through education assistance organizations (EAOs), which receive funding from two sources: (1) $50 million in public funding appropriated during the 2025 legislative session, and (2) private donations, for which donors receive full state tax credits subject to certain limitations. The total value of tax credits is capped at $75 million annually.

The 2025 appropriation of public funding for MOScholars was a step in the right direction, but there is more to be done. If all available tax credits are used, the combined public and private funding would total $125 million— enough to provide scholarships for approximately 20,000 Missouri students. While this is great news for the students who receive funding, it accounts for only a small share of Missouri’s nearly 880,000 public school students.

Voter and parent support for school choice programs is widespread. In a survey of parents taken in June 2021, approximately 75% of parents responded that they somewhat or strongly support ESA programs like MOScholars. If the legislature is serious about supporting this program, it should continue to expand funding to reach more students.

Charter School Expansion

Flexibility, freedom from bureaucracy, and the opportunity to innovate make charter schools a valuable addition to any school district—including those in remote, rural areas. Research shows that on average, charter schools outperform traditional public schools in raising academic achievement and some charter schools deliver results that are substantially better.

In nearly every state, charter schools are available to families in every type of community. In 2022–23, there were 984 rural charter schools enrolling 394,400 public school students nationwide, including 119 schools in communities designated by the Census Bureau as “remote rural.” However, of the 43 states with charter schools, Missouri is the only one with none located in rural areas.

As of 2025, charter schools are currently available to Missouri families in just three out of more than 500 school districts (Kansas City, the City of St. Louis, and Normandy). The reason is simple: In Missouri, charter schools in accredited districts can only open with the approval of the local school board. This is effectively a ban on opening charter schools in most locales. Legislation passed in 2024 allows charter schools to open in Boone County without the sponsorship of a local school board. No charter schools are operating in Boone County yet—it takes a while to open a new school—but they should be soon.

This legislation is a step in the right direction, but the real solution is to eliminate the requirement for local board sponsorship and let the market decide where charters belong. Every Missouri family should have access to this form of school choice.

Policy Recommendations

• Allow students to choose schools outside their residentially zoned districts in order to access broader education options.
• Continue to increase public funding for the MOScholars ESA program.
• Remove restrictions on where charters can open and who must sponsor them.

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The premise is simple: if you can effectively teach students to read in their early years, then they will be better at reading to learn for the rest of their years.

While there is of course need to continue reforming education practices at all grade-levels, the research literature and recent real-world examples show the positive outcomes that can result from focusing on helping students learn to read effectively at a young age.

This report explores the beneficial effects of a focus on early literacy. Drawing on the findings of a 2023 study by John Westall & Amy Cummings at Michigan State University, it provides a road map for Missouri: establishing a mandatory, academic-based third-grade retention policy, fully eliminating the three-cueing method for teaching word reading, and aligning teacher preparation programs with the science of reading.

Click here to read the full policy brief.

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