PRiME Center’s executive director, Dr. Collin Hitt, and Dr. David Griffith, from Thomas B. Fordham Institute, addressed the unsustainable funding model for Missouri’s public schools in a recent op-ed for the Missouri Independent. They highlight the disparity in funding between district public schools and charter public schools. The authors also discuss what solutions could remedy this imbalance.
Published September 2026
The PRiME Center continues to cover the impact of MOScholars. In a recent report, the PRiME team studied the geographic trends of participating students from 2024-2027.
MOScholars was created to provide educational opportunities and resources to Missouri families and students. Eligible families can seek alternative educational services ranging from private schools to therapeutic services.
One significant finding in PRiME’s report was that from 2024-2026, more than 80% of MOScholars participants were in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas (38% and 35%, respectively). Researchers also found that there was a significant increase in participation in the MOScholars program from the 2024-25 school year to the 2026-27 school year.
Today Treasurer Vivek Malek released a first-of-its-kind report measuring the performance of students in the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program (MOScholars). It evaluated the first three years of the MOScholars Program, starting in the 2022-23 school year. The most significant finding from this new report is that students in the MOScholars Program are performing at or above the national average in ELA and math, despite high numbers of MOScholars students having special needs and an IEP.
In 2025, NAEP administered its quadrennial Long-Term Trends Assessment for 9- and 13-year-olds. Today, we are going to be looking at three things we learned about 9-year-olds from the recently released results.
In 1999, the first charter school in Missouri was opened. Charter schools are independently operated, publicly funded schools that function outside the traditional public school structure. As of 2025, charter schools educate over 25,000 students across 37 schools in Missouri, with a 38th school opening in 2026.