Each year, Missouri gives standardized tests to all public school kids grades 3 through 8 to gauge their proficiency in math and English. In the 2023–2024 school year, only a tenth of KIPP Wonder’s kids who took the tests scored “proficient” in English. That’s 31 points below the state average. But it’s just a snapshot—and, in large part, due to factors outside any school’s control, such as community and family resources. Missouri also calculates a growth metric, one that Collin Hitt, the executive director of Saint Louis University’s education policy group, PRiME Center, calls “the best in the country.” It asks the question: How far did students move forward in a subject, regardless of where they started, and in comparison to other similarly situated students? And on that metric, KIPP Wonder showed the second largest average leap in English of all public elementary schools in Missouri, according to a PRiME analysis. (They were second only to a school in the Ozarks.)

Missouri is home to 37 Charter Local Education Agencies (LEAs)—20 in Kansas City and 17 in St. Louis. In 2024, Missouri charter schools educated around 25,000 students. Charter schools are public schools, free from tuition and fees, that operate in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas of Missouri. Charter schools are sponsored or “authorized” not by the state, but rather by an entity that grants a charter and provides accountability. There are currently seven charter school sponsors in Missouri—Saint Louis University is one of them. More information about Missouri charter schools can be found at https://dese.mo.gov/quality-schools/charter-schools.

The definition of rural varies depending on the source. In today’s blog post, we discuss common definitions of “rural,” when they are best used, and why picking the right definition matters.

In 2022, 95% of teens reported having access to a smartphone, a more than 20 percentage point increase from 2014–15 (73%). According to the National Education Association (NEA), these devices are taking a toll on students’ mental health as well as their ability to focus in class. Consequently, 15 states have already passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict the use of cell phones in schools statewide and Missouri lawmakers are considering following suit. When surveyed last Fall (2024), a large majority of Missouri voters reported support for prohibiting high school students from accessing their cell phones both during regular school hours (72%) and during class (79%).