Mentoring of early-career teachers is a key strategy used by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MO DESE) to improve teacher retention. To that end, MO DESE needs better information on the features of mentoring that early-career teachers receive and the features that may be related to teacher retention. At the request of MO  DESE, the Regional Educational Laboratory Central conducted a study of the frequency, duration, activities, and topics addressed in the mentoring received by first-year teachers in Missouri who registered for state-delivered teacher induction workshops in the 2022/23 school year. The study also sought to identify which mentoring features were related to teachers’ likelihood of returning to teach in the same school district for a second year, as measured by teacher employment records.

The number of people in Missouri without stable housing is rising; this includes families, children and youth. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act–initially established in 1987–requires schools to collect data on and provide support for students facing homelessness. However, little is known about the extent of students and families experiencing homelessness, the policies and programs that support these vulnerable students or their schooling opportunities and outcomes. In this report, I describe the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, describe recent homelessness trends, provide an overview of McKinney-Vento participation and briefly describe outcomes for students supported through McKinney-Vento programs across the state of Missouri. I conclude with a discussion of the importance of addressing homelessness in relation to student mobility.

Teacher mobility in Missouri and most states across the country reached long-term highs following the pandemic over the 2022-23 school year. Though mobility declined in 2023-24, several worrying trends have persisted across the state, including higher turnover among teachers working in urban, rural, and disproportionately low-income schools. Turnover is also disproportionately high among the state’s teachers of color, though the state has more than doubled the recruitment of new teachers of color over the past decade. As legislators and education leaders work to support Missouri’s teacher workforce, policy formation must engage with labor conditions specific to particular school and teacher characteristics to effectively improve outcomes for teachers and the students they educate.

In June 2020, Saint Louis University launched the SLU/YouGov poll to provide researchers and policymakers with an assessment of Missouri likely voters’ opinions on relevant political and educational issues. Some questions were asked in multiple polls to monitor trends over time, while others were relevant to potential policy changes that may have impacted the education sector at a given time. Here, we summarize the findings from nine polls conducted from 2020–2025 to identify trends in public opinion on Missouri’s education issues.

The newest data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education finds that more than one in five K–12 students were chronically absent in the 2023–24 school year. From 2019 to 2024, nearly 91% of Missouri districts (499 total) have experienced a rise in chronic absenteeism—defined as missing at least ten percent of scheduled school days. Here, we explore key trends from the most recent Missouri attendance data.

A comprehensive look at public school enrollment in Missouri, the Kansas City Metro Area and the St. Louis Metro Area.

PRiME Center’s recent report highlights the Missouri schools serving students from low income households that are producing large gains in reading and math.

This 4th Edition of PRiME’s annual Missouri Statewide Growth Report covers data from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.

This 3rd Edition of PRiME’s annual Beating the Odds Growth Report covers data from the 2021—2022 school year.

In this report, we define the problem of chronic absenteeism in Missouri and present data on school attendance in the state over the last five years.

In this report, we show how Missouri teacher salaries were reduced following the Great Recession.

In this report, we analyze changes in school-age population, public school enrollment, and school closures in Saint Louis City over the last three decades.

The PRiME Center partnered with Navigate STL Schools to determine data priorities that align with parent needs. To meet this objective, we sat down with 28 parents in a series of focus groups to learn more about how parents make informed school decisions.

The PRiME Center worked with YouGov to distribute a survey about various education topics to a sample of 600 Missouri parents of school-aged children. We summarize their perspectives in this report.

The 2022 Missouri Student Growth Report by Modality of Instruction highlights the top-growth schools according to mode of instruction on the first day of school in fall 2020. We highlight the schools achieving top student growth within the three most common modes of instruction during the 2020-21 school year—in-person, hybrid, and distanced instruction and rank the top schools in student growth in three categories—elementary schools, eleMiddle schools and middle schools—for both English Language Arts (ELA) and math. This report is the third in the 2022 series of Growth Reports that examine growth scores on the MAP within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2022 Beating the Odds Report: Student Growth in Missouri’s Highest Poverty Schools highlights the top schools that are “beating the odds” across the state by moving the needle on student learning while serving high concentrations of low-income students. We rank the top schools “beating the odds” in student growth in three categories—elementary schools, eleMiddle schools and middle schools—for both English Language Arts (ELA) and math. This report is the second in the 2022 series of Growth Reports that examine growth scores on the MAP within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2022 Missouri Statewide Student Growth Report highlights the top 20 schools for statewide student growth in three categories—elementary schools, eleMiddle schools and middle schools—for both English Language Arts (ELA) and math, schoolwide and for the Subgroup, based on PRiME Growth Scores. The 2022 PRiME Growth Score is a translation of DESE’s 2020–21 Missouri Growth Model score, which reflects average annual student growth for three school years. This report is the first in the 2022 series of Growth Reports that examine growth scores on the MAP within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this report, we use publicly available data to describe trends in postsecondary success for those students who graduate from a Missouri public high school and subsequently enroll as a first-time, full-time student at one of Missouri’s public postsecondary institutions of higher education. To measure success, we examine college enrollment trends, early college academic performance (remediation rates and college GPA), early college persistence, and eventual college completion for the Missouri high school graduation classes of 2010 through 2019. When possible, we compare trends in Missouri to national patterns and trends. We also examine trends over time within the state of Missouri, providing an in-depth examination of how these results vary by geographic region and high school characteristics, including school locale, racial composition, and income levels by highlighting outcomes for the class of 2015—the most recent cohort of postsecondary enrollees to exhibit 6-year completion rates.

In this report, we use publicly available data to describe patterns in college-intending behaviors and postsecondary access for Missouri high school students compared to national trends. We also examine trends within Missouri by looking at high schools serving unique student bodies, by locality, and by region. Finally, we examine results for the class of 2019, the most recent class to have successfully completed high school prior to COVID-19-induced disruptions.