The St. Louis Public Schools District (SLPS) routinely overspends its budget. A recent state auditor’s report warns that continued deficit spending could push the district’s reserve fund below the 3% threshold—the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s formal marker for serious financial stress. In fact, the district was already downgraded from accredited to provisionally accredited by the state school board over its financial troubles.

Yet even as enrollment declines, budgets tighten, and accreditation hangs in the balance, SLPS continues to fumble basic asset management. The district has failed to sell six long-vacant school buildings in north St. Louis, many of which have sat empty for nearly two decades. It is now moving forward with plans to demolish them. So, instead of aggressively pursuing sales and accepting realistic offers, the district is preparing to charge St. Louis taxpayers for million-dollar demolitions.

This pattern is not merely troubling. It is mind-boggling, especially for a district with only 18,284 students still enrolled — a drop of more than 97,000 students since its demographic peak of 115,543 in 1967.

To be fair, selling these properties is genuinely difficult. St. Louis has suffered decades of population loss, concentrated poverty, and economic decline, making redevelopment of large, aging, and often deteriorated historic buildings a tough sell. Attracting private developers willing to take on major rehabilitation projects in these neighborhoods is no easy task.

But that reality makes the district’s track record even more damning. In one case, it seems that SLPS didn’t even bother to respond to offers on a building:

Benjamin Anderson said that he has tried to buy the 133-year-old Euclid School in the Fountain Park neighborhood for three years—he even had the property under contract for $200,000 at one time—but he couldn’t get the district to respond before the contract expired.

“They completely ghosted us,” Anderson said Friday.

The building is now slated to be demolished.

Many of these schools are among the city’s most architecturally significant buildings. Symbols of inertia and vanishing civic pride, they are simply left to decay while the district explores expensive demolition using insurance funds and city taxes. Critical resources that could support classroom instruction are thus directed toward tearing down infrastructure.

The challenges at SLPS underscore a deeper failure of accountability. When a public school district cannot control costs, manage its real estate portfolio effectively, or adapt to enrollment reality, students and taxpayers bear the costly burden of that failure.

The post A Failing Grade in School Management appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Birth rates have been declining in the United States for decades, and there is little indication that the trend will reverse anytime soon. This poses challenges for many of our institutions that were built on the implicit assumption of continued population growth. Social Security is the most prominent example. Because the program relies on taxes paid by current workers to fund benefits for retirees, it depends on a steady influx of younger workers. Social Security is in trouble, and its day of reckoning is not far off.

More quietly, schools across the United States are struggling with declining enrollment. After decades of needing more—more buildings, more teachers, more staff—we’re entering an era where we will need less of all these things.

In Missouri, public school enrollment has declined about 4 percent since the turn of the century. The decline has been even steeper in many urban areas.

The enrollment decline is not a temporary phenomenon. Demographic projections indicate the trend is likely to continue and, in many places, accelerate. And unlike forecasts of the weather or stock market, demographic projections are highly reliable. We know what is coming.

Yet many districts continue to operate as if enrollment will rebound. This is understandable. School closures and staff reductions are politically difficult and often deeply unpopular. However, delaying these decisions does not change the underlying demographic reality.

Preparing for continued enrollment decline means consolidating and, in some cases, closing schools. It also means aligning staffing levels with student enrollment. With limited resources available for public education, maintaining excess capacity spreads those resources too thinly, undermining educational quality.

The demographic writing is on the wall. One way or another, our school system will need to respond. Districts that plan proactively for declining enrollment are likely to navigate the transition more successfully than those that postpone difficult decisions until circumstances leave them no choice.

The post Declining Enrollment Will Force Hard Choices in Missouri Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Interestingly, the bottom ten spenders had a higher average academic letter grade than those in the top ten. However, many of the top spenders in the state are tiny rural districts with fewer than 50 students. That raised an important question: Would this pattern hold when comparing districts of a similar type?

Table 1 begins to answer that question by focusing specifically on suburban and city districts—schools that are far more comparable in size and structure, but still vary widely in student demographics. It should be noted that Table 1 includes non-current spending items like interest and capital outlay (such as constructing a new gym, renovations, etc.).

For reference, in the 2023-24 school year, the average expenditure per student was around $19,500. Of that, about $15,900 were current expenditures and $3,600 were non-current expenditures.

Source: MOSchoolRankings.org

Interestingly, the five highest-performing school districts in the state are split between the highest and lowest total spenders. Table 1 suggests that it is overly simplistic to assume that more money per student automatically leads to better academic outcomes.

Consider Valley Park and Park Hill as examples. Both spend relatively high amounts per student (including non-current expenditures) and serve comparatively lower shares of low-income students, yet neither achieves top-tier academic results. Meanwhile, several lower-spending districts of similar demographics earn strong academic grades.

This does not mean funding is irrelevant, but rather that the process of producing strong academic outcomes is complex and money isn’t everything.

The post The Wide Difference in Spending Per Student in Missouri’s Suburban Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These are all relevant questions, and at the Show-Me Institute, we’ve created a resource to answer such questions: MOSchoolRankings.org

As an example of what these data can be used for, Figure 1 shows how Missouri school districts are distributed across different levels of spending per student. It should be noted that these statistics include non-current spending items like interest and capital outlay (such as constructing a new gym, renovations, etc.).

For reference, in the 2023–24 school year, the average expenditure per student was around $19,500. Of that, about $15,900 were current expenditures and $3,600 were non-current expenditures.

Figure 1: Number of School Districts and Charter Schools Grouped By Average Expenditures Per Student, 2024–25

Source: MOSchoolRankings.org

Most Missouri school districts and charter schools spent between $13,000 and $22,000 per student in the 2024–25 school year, but there are numerous outliers in the data, as shown below.

Table 1: Public School Districts and Charter Schools with the Highest and Lowest Average Expenditures Per Student, 2024–25

Source: MOSchoolRankings.org

In Table 1, many of the highest-spending school districts in Missouri are rural, including several extremely small districts, such as Missouri City 56, which enrolls just 14 students. By contrast, many of the lowest-spending districts are also rural, though they tend to be larger and vary more in size.

Missouri’s mean total expenditure per student (weighting each district equally and including non-current expenditures) is $20,406, while the median is $18,934. Even so, there is a surprisingly wide spending range across the state, from roughly $12,000 per student to more than $60,000 per student.

These kinds of statistics are important when evaluating potential changes to the funding formula. To take one small example, Spickard R-II saw enrollment decline from 54 students in 2005–06 to 21 students in 2024–25: a 61% decrease. For state funding, Missouri’s hold-harmless policy guarantees that Spickard R-II receives no less than the state funding it received in 2005–06, even though the district has far fewer students. This likely contributes to why Spickard spent $41,224 per student in 2024–25.

Clear, accessible data are important. And of course, spending is only one aspect of this. MOSchoolRankings.org allows users to go further by comparing districts on academic performance, student demographics, growth, and much more.

The post Which School Districts Spent the Most Per Student? Which Spent the Least? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While the Missouri Legislature continues to debate A–F school report cards, the Show-Me Institute recently released our annual report card update on MOSchoolRankings.org.

Our rankings are built on a model that incorporates 10 academic indicators of student success. All data are sourced from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and all English/language arts (ELA) and math scores are based on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). Each component is weighted equally, and a full explanation of the methodology is available online.

Table 1 shows all 24 public school districts and charter schools that received an “A” in the 2024–2025 school year.

Suburban and rural districts dominate the top rankings, with numerous districts from St. Louis County (Ladue, Brentwood, Clayton). Many of the rural school districts are exceptionally small: Skyline has 81 students and Thornfield has 48. The largest school district on the list is Nixa Public Schools (near Springfield) with 6,518 students.

The suburban districts have relatively low rates of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL)—a common proxy for school poverty rate. Fewer than 10 percent of Ladue and Clayton students were eligible for FRPL, with Brentwood at 18 percent, Nixa at 26 percent, Festus at 28 percent, and Ozark at 35 percent. However, some rural “A” districts have a sizeable number of lower-income students.

Mansfield R-IV, which had 60 percent of its 622 students qualify for FRPL, performed above average in almost every single category (except in ELA growth). Richwoods R-VII, a small rural district about an hour from St. Louis, had 100 percent of its 125 students qualify for FRPL and had particularly impressive scores in math. These examples demonstrate that low-income schools can achieve academic success.

There is a lot more to delve into for academic performance. Table 1 is just one snapshot of what is available on MOSchoolRankings.org. Accountability tools like these can help highlight success stories, identify areas for improvement, and provide a clearer picture of how schools across Missouri are performing.

The post Looking at Missouri’s “A” Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri’s property tax system works best when the assessments are accurate, the tax base is wide, and the rates are low. That combination will help grow Missouri’s economy for everyone while properly funding the necessary functions of local government. However, a radical change in the system is being put before voters in Webster, Christian, Lawrence, and Dade counties in April. These four counties will vote on whether to prohibit any property tax increases due to reassessments. Current law requires local governments to roll back tax rates as assessments increase, but we all know that taxes still go up, sometimes substantially.

At the Show-Me Institute, we support low taxes, and I am well-aware of how tempting this will be to voters. But using market valuations in reassessment to set tax levels is a good system. While our property tax system needs reforms, eliminating any and all tax increases from reassessments will make Missouri more dependent on other taxes that hurt our economy far more than property taxes do. Hate them as much as you wish, but property taxes indisputably harm economic growth less than other taxes do.

These property tax limitations would reduce the ability of school districts to fund themselves and would make them more dependent on state aid. Consider the following: school districts in St. Louis County regularly receive at least 80% of their funding from local sources, primarily property taxes, and some are over 90%. It is nowhere near that level in Southwest Missouri. Nixa school district in Christian County is only 54% locally funded, while Marshfield school district in Webster is only 46% locally funded. Even Springfield school district, the largest school district in Greene County, where no property taxes changes are proposed, is only 58% locally funded. These changes would make school districts in these counties more dependent on state aid, not less. Again, I’m aware that many voters may view that as a benefit, but it is anything but.

Numerous other harmful effects would come from diluting the market forces (in the form of assessments based on market values) that form the basis of property taxation. California provides us with an example of the harms of these types of property tax caps with its famous Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which dramatically limited increases in property assessments and taxes. Proposition 13 certainly had its intended effect of lowering property taxes for California homeowners. However, it also reduced mobility, significantly increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities for similar properties receiving similar services. These negative consequences are exactly what these four counties would experience over the long run.

There are also significant constitutional concerns with this legislation. Missouri Constitution Chapter X, Section 3 states that “taxes . . . shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” So, consider the issue of the Logan-Rogersville R-VIII school district. This school district serves families in three counties. If voters approve these tax changes, the property tax system in one of those three counties would remain unchanged (Greene), while in the other two (Webster and Christian) it would be illegal to have a tax increase from reassessment. It would certainly seem unconstitutional for property owners within the same taxing district who own the same type of property (single-family homes) to face different tax and assessment systems for the same services.

We need property tax reform in Missouri, but this total limitation is too severe. If enacted, the property tax proposals before the voters in these four fast-growing counties would make the region’s overall tax system worse, not better. I hope voters will look past the easy appeal of a tax limit to think about the long-term harms.

The post The Wrong Way to Fix Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Business Journal.

Missouri’s property tax system works best when the assessments are accurate, the tax base is wide, and the rates are low. That combination will help grow Missouri’s economy for everyone while properly funding the necessary functions of local government. However, a radical change in the system is being put before voters in St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties in April. These three counties will vote on whether to prohibit any property tax increases due to reassessments. Current law requires local governments to roll back tax rates as assessments increase, but we all know that taxes still go up, sometimes substantially.

This change would also reduce the ability of school districts to fund themselves and would make them more dependent on state aid. Consider the following: Parkway school district in St. Louis County is 89% funded by local taxes. However, Fox school district in Jefferson County is only 51% locally funded, while Wentzville school district in St. Charles is only 64% locally funded, and St. Clair school district in Franklin is just 45% locally funded. These changes would make school districts in these three counties more dependent on state aid, not less. Again, I’m aware that many voters may view that as a benefit, but it is anything but.

At the Show-Me Institute, we support low taxes, and I am well-aware of how tempting this will be to voters. But using market valuations in reassessment to set tax levels is a good system. While our property tax system needs reforms, eliminating any and all tax increases from reassessments will make Missouri more dependent on other taxes that hurt our economy far more than property taxes do. Hate them as much as you wish, but property taxes indisputably harm economic growth less than other taxes do.

Numerous other harmful effects would come from diluting the market forces (in the form of assessments based on market values) that form the basis of property taxation. California provides us with an example of the harms of these types of property tax caps with its famous Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which dramatically limited increases in property assessments and taxes. Proposition 13 certainly had its intended effect of lowering property taxes for California homeowners. However, it also reduced mobility, significantly increased alternative taxes, limited homeownership opportunities, and caused substantial tax disparities for similar properties receiving similar services. These negative consequences are exactly what St. Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties would experience over the long run.

There are also significant constitutional concerns with this legislation. Missouri Constitution Chapter X, Section 3 states that “taxes . . . shall be uniform upon the same class or subclass of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.” So, consider the issue of the Meramec Valley R-III school district. This school district serves families in three counties. If voters approve these tax changes, the property tax system in one of those three counties would remain unchanged (St. Louis), while in the other two (Jefferson and Franklin) it would be illegal to have a tax increase from reassessment. It would certainly seem unconstitutional for property owners within the same taxing district who own the same type of property (single-family homes) to face different tax and assessment systems for the same services.

We need property tax reform in Missouri, but this total limitation is too severe. If enacted, the property tax proposals before the voters in these three fast-growing counties would make the region’s overall tax system worse, not better. I hope voters will look past the easy appeal of a tax limit to think about the long-term harms.

The post The Wrong Way to Fix Property Taxes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is a much-needed improvement to school accountability in Missouri. Parents and community members will finally have access to clear information about how their local schools are performing.

Following the governor’s address, I wanted to re-up my post about school report cards from last May, which helps to explain why the letter-grade requirement is sorely needed and how it improves upon our current school report card system.

It is printed in full below.

———

Information Overload and Missouri School Report Cards

Have you ever started reading the warning label on an over-the-counter drug like aspirin or ibuprofen? Ever finished one? Probably not.

Drug warning labels are classic examples of information overload—so packed with details that they become practically useless. Unfortunately, the school report cards produced by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) suffer from the same problem.

In theory, these report cards should help parents and community members quickly understand how their local schools are performing. When well-designed, they can promote transparency and inform decision-making. But if a school report card is not organized and does not emphasize the most important information, it functions like a drug warning label. It can include a lot of detail but be of little practical value.

If you’re curious to see this for yourself, here is a link to the school report cards made available by DESE. Choose a district, then a school, and you can scroll through a vast amount of information. However, after you’ve taken the time to look through it all, you may realize you haven’t learned very much. DESE’s report cards may be comprehensive, but they fail to deliver what busy families need most: clear, accessible information about school quality.

Now, contrast the Missouri report cards with this report card for Briarmeadow Charter School in Houston, produced by the Texas Education Agency. At the very top, letter grades in four categories are displayed prominently:

• Overall Rating: A

• Student Achievement: A

• School Progress: A
• Closing the Gap: A

With just a glance, you know where this school stands.

Texas is not alone in this approach. States such as Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana also use summary performance indicators on their school report cards to give the public a clear picture of school quality. Unlike Missouri, these states are courageous enough to rate schools based on performance, and most importantly, publicly identify schools that are failing to educate their students.

It’s no coincidence that students in states with strong transparency and accountability policies, including clear and informative school report cards, consistently outperform Missouri students academically. These policies are key drivers of school improvement, and without them Missouri is only likely to fall further behind. School report cards that are informative about actual school performance are a simple way to get our state moving in the right direction.

The post Meaningful School Report Cards are on the Way appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The four-day school week (4DSW) has expanded rapidly nationwide and especially in Missouri, where roughly one-in-three districts now use it. The model is most common in rural areas, with a few exceptions.

Why is it so popular? We interviewed 36 Missouri educators—20 superintendents, 4 principals, and 12 teachers—to understand districts’ motivations. Nearly all said the 4DSW boosts teacher recruitment and retention, and they cited this as the primary reason for adopting it.

We paired these interviews with a quantitative analysis of teacher employment data from Missouri districts between 2009 and 2024. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we compare districts that adopted the 4DSW with similar districts that did not to estimate the policy’s effects on turnover and hiring.

The bottom line: We find no evidence that the 4DSW reduces teacher turnover, even six or more years after adoption, and no evidence that it improves recruitment. In short, it is not a solution to districts’ staffing challenges.

This disconnect between perception and reality is puzzling. Our study can’t pinpoint the cause, but we offer several explanations. One is that while teachers value the 4DSW, they may not value it enough to change their employment decisions; as one teacher told us, the 4DSW “made [the] job a little bit more enjoyable” but didn’t affect whether they stayed. Confirmation bias may also play a role, with educators noticing success stories while overlooking cases where the policy had no impact.

Whatever the reason, our findings show a significant gap between the common perception of the 4DSW and the reality on the ground. Moreover, our conclusions are not unique—recent studies in other states reach similar conclusions about the 4DSW’s limited labor-market effects (e.g., see here and here). This is especially concerning given that most prior research shows that the 4DSW harms student achievement (e.g., see here).

Missouri districts may or may not prefer the 4DSW, but we should be clear about what it does and doesn’t do. The research shows it doesn’t improve student learning, and it doesn’t help with staffing. Framing the 4DSW as a strategy to improve educational quality is a dubious proposition.

The post The 4-Day School Week Doesn’t Improve Teacher Recruitment or Retention appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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.

The post Education Funding Formula appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Paying teachers to get master’s degrees that do not make them more effective is inefficient. Most obviously, it misdirects school district resources—why privilege teachers who get a credential that does not make them better at their jobs when we could use metrics tied to actual performance, or just pay all teachers more? The master’s pay premium also incentivizes teachers to invest tuition money, time, and energy in degrees with no measurable value. And the artificial demand fueled by these policies encourages universities to expand the degree programs themselves. All around, it is a tremendous waste of resources.

A new report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) describes the current national policy landscape with respect to the master’s degree premium. The report identifies Missouri as one of just 15 states that require districts to pay a master’s degree premium. In fact, we just re-upped the policy in 2024 with Senate Bill 727, which raised minimum teacher pay and maintained a new, higher minimum pay standard for teachers with master’s degrees (and at least 10 years of experience).

The NCTQ report also looked at salary schedules in 140 large districts in the United States, including three in Missouri: Kansas City, Springfield, and St. Louis. All three have large pay premiums for teachers with master’s degrees, especially highly experienced teachers. For example, with 20 or more years of experience the premium exceeds $10,000 annually in all three districts, and it gets as high as $18,600 in Kansas City.

This is a steep price to pay for a credential that has been demonstrated repeatedly to have no connection to classroom effectiveness. It’s time to end this practice.

The post We Shouldn’t Pay Teachers for Master’s Degrees appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

His response to a laundry list of budget items that were earmarked for a particular school district was:

Given the State’s historic investments in education this year, it is incumbent upon local school districts to prioritize the use of their resources for this type of programming as they deem appropriate and necessary.

In other words, the Foundation Formula is intended to make sure that all districts have and are able to spend an amount that is “adequate” for the successful education of their students. The Foundation Formula funds should cover repairing an outdoor track in the Houston R-1 school district, not earmarks.

Some programs, such as the St. Louis reading literacy program or Kansas City for K-12 career literacy resources, were vetoed entirely because the budget contains “multiple other areas of funding for similar programs.”

Increases for programs such as the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Scholarships or the Workforce Diploma Program were removed. Perhaps the governor wants to see evaluations of the impact of these programs first.

All in all, the governor, along with his staff, appears to have finally taken a close look at the education items in the budget before signing it. Perhaps the next fiscal year, when the governor is involved from the beginning, will usher in a new era of responsibility and accountability for the spending of our hard-earned dollars.

The post Credit Where Credit Is Due appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

See where your school ranks here.

The post New Data Update: See the Latest Missouri School Rankings and Spending Reports appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Click here to read the full report.

The post Fixing Missouri’s School Funding Formula appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Governor Kehoe’s first budget does not include the $300 million requested for the formula (although it does include $200 million in other additional funding). So, let’s break down the requested increase to see if the governor is refusing to “fully fund the formula,” as accused. Perhaps instead the requested increase is not reasonable.

Technically, the SAT reflects the current expenditures per student in Missouri’s highest-performing districts, referred to in the law as Performance Districts. The thinking is that what these districts spent should be adequate. But what does it take to be a Performance District? The way the law has been interpreted is that Performance Districts are those that receive at least 90 percent of their possible points on their Annual Performance Report (APR) under Missouri’s accountability system.

The accountability system, also known as MSIP 6, gives districts points based on a rubric of items considered important by DESE and the state board of education—although some are only loosely related to performance. The FY 2026 DESE budget request relies on 2022 APR points to calculate the SAT. In 2022, districts could earn up to 52 APR points for attendance, having 8th graders fill out an Individual Career and Academic Plan, administering a Kindergarten Entry Assessment to incoming kindergartners, submitting their required financial reports on time, conducting a Climate and Culture Survey, and submitting a Continuous Improvement Plan. All 29 of the Performance Districts received 52 out of 52 points for these categories.

But let’s take a closer look. Eight of the districts only serve students in kindergarten through 8th grade—they don’t have high schools. These districts had only 114 possible APR points, and 52 of them had nothing to do with student performance.

In two of the Performance Districts, Leopold R-III and Ste. Genevieve, fewer than half of the students tested scored Proficient or higher in English/language arts. In another Performance District, Mansfield R-IV, just 52 percent of high school graduates met any benchmark for being considered college or career ready when they graduated. In Brunswick R-II just 28.6 percent of graduates received an advanced credential prior to graduating, compared to 100 percent of graduates in Jefferson C-123. Are we sure these are the best 29 districts out of more than 500?

Here’s the problem: weak accountability systems don’t hold districts accountable. In the case of Missouri, that consequence bleeds over to funding. More than half of the Performance Districts are very small, with fewer than 300 students in the entire district. Spending tends to be higher in these districts because there are few economies of scale. That higher spending leads to hundreds of more dollars for all 850,000 students in the state when it leads to a budget request to add $300 million in state spending.

So before calling foul on the governor’s budget, let’s make sure that the DESE budget request actually makes sense.

The post Performance Districts and Education Spending appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So, what happened last year and what does it mean? It’s hard to say. DESE’s press release states: “The data shows that Missouri schools are meeting the more rigorous requirements and higher expectations set forth in MSIP 6 . . .” This is according to the new commissioner who took over the department last summer. And then in a bulleted list, there’s this: “The APR will not be used for classifying LEAs this year.” (LEA stands for local education agency.) In other words, for the tenth year in a row, the accountability system will not be used for district accreditation. Why not? DESE doesn’t say. Also, when DESE plans to update district accreditation, which won’t be for another two years, it is going to use a three-year rolling average of the APR scores instead of a single year. Why?

What is clear is that the state board of education and the new commissioner are punting when it comes to accountability for school performance. Parents who want to know how their children’s district is doing—both in real terms and compared to other districts in the state—have to rely on sites like MoSchoolRankings. That’s information DESE ought to provide. The state leaders of public education in Missouri either have no confidence in their measurement system or they have no confidence in their schools.

The post Will the New Commissioner of Education Bring More Accountability to Missouri School Districts? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This year’s request includes an increase of nearly $350 million for the Foundation Formula, due to an increase in the base amount that the state considers “adequate” to educate a child. This amount had been $6,375 for four years, from FY 2020 through FY 2024. The FY 2025 budget included a request to increase the amount to $7,145, phased in over two years. Why the increase? Well, that’s a bit confusing. Please follow along.

Technically, the amount reflects the current expenditures per student in Missouri’s highest-performing districts, referred to as Performance Districts. The thinking is that what these districts spent should be adequate. But what does it take to be a Performance District?

The way the law has been interpreted is that Performance Districts are those that receive at least 90 percent of possible points on their Annual Performance Report (APR) under Missouri’s accountability system, after removing the outliers at the top and bottom of the list. The accountability system, also known as MSIP 6, gives districts points based on a rubric of items considered important to DESE and the state Board of Education—although some items are only loosely related to performance.

For example, districts can earn up to 52 points for attendance, having 8th graders fill out an Individual Career and Academic Plan, administering a Kindergarten Entry Assessment to incoming kindergartners, submitting their required financial reports on time, conducting a Climate and Culture Survey, and submitting a Continuous Improvement Plan. All 28 of the Performance Districts received 52 out of 52 points in these categories. Eight of the districts had only 114 possible points—so there’s almost half of them.

One of the Performance Districts was Gasconade C-4, a rural K-8 district with just 100 students. Last year, 37 percent of its students performed on grade level in English/language arts (ELA) and 27 percent did so in math—both below statewide averages. Another Performance District, Hudson R-IX, with just 39 students in grades K-8, had only one in four students on grade level in ELA and just three in ten in math. Mind you, this district has fewer than 10 students per grade.

The problem is that weak accountability systems reward weak performance. In the case of Missouri, that consequence bleeds over to funding. More than half of the Performance Districts are very small, with fewer than 300 students in the entire district. Spending tends to be higher in these districts because there are few economies of scale. That higher spending leads to hundreds of more dollars for all 850,000 students in the state and adds up to almost $350 million in state spending.

Are we sure this is the best system we can come up with?

The post What’s So Great about Performance Districts? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One such item is DESE requesting a much higher than usual increase in the Foundation Formula. The Foundation Formula is the principal vehicle for distributing state general revenue to school districts in a way that (theoretically) reflects student needs and (theoretically) balances resources between poor and wealthy districts. The total Foundation Formula funding has been creeping up from about $3.4 billion a few years ago to $3.8 billion last year. For the next fiscal year, DESE would like to keep the $3.8 billion and add another $500 million, which is three or four times the typical increase.

Why the big increase? Three years ago, DESE asked for an increase in the base amount per student, in part because enrollment was declining. (For reference, the number of students being funded by this “student-based formula” has decreased by over 20,000 students in the last five years). Apparently, having the formula vary with the number of students is only okay if that number is going up. In fact, the increase in the base amount accounts for over $300 million of the request.

Secondly, a bill was passed last year that made several changes to education programs at the state level. The estimated cost of all of those changes was “up to” $228 million in FY 2026. But that includes changes in a laundry list of budget items—not just the Foundation Formula.

Here are what the fiscal effects directly associated with the Foundation Formula were calculated to be for FY 2026 by the Committee on Legislative Research’s Oversight Division. Just over $1.6 million was estimated for changes to how virtual students are counted. A change in how students are counted—from being based entirely on attendance to being based 90 percent on attendance and 10 percent on enrollment—was expected to cost $41 million in FY 2026. A change to how preschool students are counted is expected to cost an additional $61 million in FY 2026. Finally, incentives that increase the Foundation Formula for districts that keep a five-day school week, instead of switching to a four-day school week, are projected to cost $40 million in FY 2026.

So why is the legislature being asked for an additional $500 million? It seems that DESE will not accept districts receiving less money for fewer students.

The post $10 Billion Is a Lot of Money appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is one key piece of information left out of the report—how much the district actually spends. The report tells residents the district spends $1,718 less per pupil than the state average on operating expenses, but it does not tell us that amount.

While it is understandable for organizations to want to put their best foot forward, this lack of transparency is a real problem. Taxpayers should know how much their schools are spending. Unfortunately, districts and the state make this information hard to find.

That is why the Show-Me Institute created MOSchoolRankings. In addition to having detailed academic data, the site provides detailed financial records for every school district in the state. In 2023, Wentzville spent $15,759 per pupil in total expenditures. That means roughly $390,000 is being spent on a classroom of 25 students. Want to know exactly where those dollars are being spent? The website breaks these expenditures down by program, providing the most granular level of analysis in the state.

The annual reports sent by districts are not meant to be a detailed accounting of performance and spending. They are promotional materials designed to paint the district in a positive light. There is nothing wrong with that—organizations should share their successes. Taxpayers who want more information, however, should have access to it.

The post How Much Does My School District Spend? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.