PRiME In The News: Chronic Absenteeism Declining, PRiME Talks New Data on STLPR
Last year, we published a report titled Empty Desks: An Analysis of Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri Schools, detailing the growing attendance problem state- and nationwide. In the 2023-24 school year, more than 1 in 5 students was chronically absent, missing more than 10% of scheduled school days in a school year. The recent release of the 2024-25 data suggests a shifting trend.
Displacement of Black Teachers in Missouri Post-Brown Summary and Coverage
A summary and overview of news coverage of Joseph. R. Nichols, Jr., Ph.D. and Alyssa Ignaczak, M.Ed.’s report on Displacement of Black Teachers in Missouri Post-Brown, 1954-1970.
Growth Data Summit News Coverage
Last week, the PRiME Center hosted a data summit series to discuss The Missouri Growth Score Model and how it is being used to highlight school and instructional achievement.
Reflections from a Charter School Trailblazer: Collin Hitt and Kelly Garrett sit down to discuss Garrett’s 14 years of leadership at KIPP St. Louis
Reflections from a Charter School Trailblazer: Collin Hitt and Kelly Garrett sit down to discuss Garrett’s 14 years of leadership at KIPP St. Louis
PRiME In the News: PRiME’s Dr. Courtney Vahle discusses Missouri absenteeism
In April, PRiME’s Director of Operations, Dr. Courtney Vahle, sat down with KOMU 8 and Fox23 NOW to discuss chronic absenteeism and her corresponding co-authored report, Empty Desks: An Analysis of Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri Schools (co-authored with PRiME affiliate researcher, Dr. Margaret Powers).
PRiME In the News: Collin Hitt on Homeschooling in Missouri
This report, focused on homeschooling in Missouri, found through estimations that of the over one million school-aged children in Missouri, 61,000 (6% of all school-age children) are homeschooled.
PRiME in the NEWS: Courtney Vahle “We need to rethink school start times in Missouri'“
In the fall of 2024, PRiME’s Director of Operations, Dr. Courtney Vahle (With co-author, Paul Wunnenberg) took a deep dive into high school start times across Missouri. After compiling a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive dataset of Missouri high school start times, containing 295 high schools from 230 school districts across the state, the authors found that the Missouri statewide average start time, 7:48 AM, is a full 42 minutes earlier than the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends.
PRiME in the News: PRiME Growth Scores Featured in STL Magazine
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.)