PUBLICATIONS

Check out the highlights on Missouri's school characteristics and academic performance from the 2017-18 school year compared to surrounding states and the nation.

Check out highlights on COVID re-opening plans, school characteristics, and community data for the Kansas City Region.

Check out highlights on COVID re-opening plans, school characteristics, and community data for the St. Louis Region.

Check out the highlights from the 2017-18 academic year for students, funding, and teachers in the traditional public school districts in 6 counties in the Missouri Bootheel.

Check out the highlights from the 2017-18 academic year for students, funding, and teachers in the traditional public and public charter school districts in the greater Kansas City region.

Check out the highlights from the 2017-18 academic year for students, funding, and teachers in the traditional public and public charter school districts in St. Louis City and County.

Check out the highlights on Missouri's school characteristics and academic performance from the 2017-18 school year compared to surrounding states and the nation.

A PRiMER on the 4-Day School Week in Missouri.

A PRiMER on Missouri’s 2024 MAP Scores.

A PRiMER on Title 1 Funding in Missouri.

A PRiMER on High School Start Times in Missouri.

A PRiMER on Chronic Absenteeism in Missouri Schools.

A comprehensive PRiMER on the Missouri Growth Model.

Since 2020, Saint Louis University (SLU) has worked with YouGov to poll Missouri citizens on current issues in politics and education. The PRiME Center funded a poll presented to 900 likely Missouri voters from February 14–February 26, 2024 to inform stakeholders on public opinion surrounding political and education-related policy issues. In this report, we dive into the most recent education results.

Recently, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education proposed an increase in our state’s public school funding. This PRiMER summarizes the current state funding model, explains its potential for inequity, and analyzes the proposed funding changes.

This PRiMER shows the most common types of charter and magnet schools within Missouri, and defines some terms helpful for understanding different types of charter and magnet schools.

The Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP 6) offers a new way to measure school success . This PRiMER explains the MSIP 6 and how schools and district will be graded moving forward. Additionally, you can check out how your school or district scored!

This PRiMER shows how gun violence has increasingly affected Missouri students, highlights some common policy solutions across the country, and tracks Missouri voter opinion about these policies.

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

The PRiME Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Collin Hitt, breaks down the Missouri Growth Model and answers frequently asked questions about Growth Scores.   

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.

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

What is the Missouri Growth Model? This infographic outlines why PRiME Growth Report are useful in measuring how much a student has learned in a given school year.

In this report, we use the PRiME Growth Score, a translation of state-calculated growth scores from the Missouri Growth Model, to highlight the schools achieving the top student growth while serving high concentrations of low-income students. This report focuses on the highest-growth schools serving the highest proportion of students eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, those where the student body eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch (FRL) is in the fourth quartile. We rank top-growth schools in both English language arts and math and divide the rankings according to three school types.

In this report, we describe the PRiME Growth Score, highlighting the top schools in terms of student growth. We use the results of the Missouri Growth Model to translate these scores into more understandable results. Importantly, while PRiME Growth Scores were assigned to all schools with growth NCE scores assigned (that is, schools that serve students in Grades 4-8), this report focuses on the highest-growth schools across the state in both English language arts and math for schoolwide and subgroup achievement categories.

Community schools are commonly defined as physical and relational hubs for partnerships between the school and community to support student, family, and community well-being (Oakes et al., 2017). These schools are expanding nationwide to improve equity and student success. St. Louis has experimented with community schools since the 1960s, with various iterations such as Community Education Centers and Full-Service Schools. Many initiatives faced funding shortages, leadership instability, or external disruptions, highlighting the need for sustainable implementation strategies.

Each year, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education provides data on the attendance rates of Missouri students. Here, we provide a brief overview of chronic absenteeism and updated attendance rates in Missouri in advance of our forthcoming policy brief. We also debut PRiME’s interactive maps, this one detailing the most recent proportional attendance rates by district.

With children making up roughly one-fifth of the homeless population, education policy must address support and resources for these students and for schools. In this blog post, we explore the data on students experiencing homelessness in Missouri.

To calculate school funding, Missouri currently uses a model that estimates the cost of adequately educating a child and subtracts out what can be raised locally through taxes to arrive at the total aid provided to a school. The current model was developed nearly 20 years ago in 2005. There is contention with a few key pieces of the funding formula, some of which were addressed this year with the passage of Senate Bill 727, and some that persist. 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam has been given to students since 1969. This nationwide assessment produces important metrics about our country’s students. Here, we discuss nationwide and Missouri-specific trends from the 2024 data release.

The PRiME Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Collin Hitt, breaks down the Missouri Growth Model and answers frequently asked questions about Growth Scores.   

Dozens of Missouri schools have been recognized as the state’s “highest growth schools” in a series of new rankings from the PRiME Center at Saint Louis University. These schools are being highlighted for the significant educational gains their students made over the last two school years.

As more school districts across Missouri adopt a four-day school week (4DSW), the debate over its effectiveness continues. Here, we summarize what we’ve learned about the 4DSW in Missouri.

In 2024, SLU and YouGov partnered to poll Missouri voters (once in February and once in August) and Missouri parents (in May) on education topics. Below, we cover three voter opinions that received strong consensus from Missouri voters and parents.

When researchers and policymakers examine student enrollment and demographic trends in Missouri, one common measure used to capture the socioeconomic status of a school’s student body is the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL). While this metric has been widely used, it often fails to accurately reflect family income and, as a result, can overestimate the true need within schools. This issue warrants further exploration, especially as it impacts key decisions about resource allocation and support for disadvantaged students.

Last week, we published an update of the Missouri MAP scores brief to reflect the most recent release of data for the 2023—24 school year. Scores on the Missouri MAP test were effectively flat from 2023 to 2024. Math scores have mostly returned to pre-pandemic levels. ELA scores have yet to recover, especially at the early grades, which remain at 2021 levels. This reflects a larger trend of declining early literacy rates, which have been on the decline since 2012.

St. Louis, MO – At least 1 in 16 school-aged children in Missouri are educated at home instead of at brick-and-mortar public and private schools. This is the key finding of a new report by the Policy Research in Missouri Education (PRiME) Center at Saint Louis University. 
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many families turned to homeschooling for the first time. Now, a new study from the PRiME Center puts a number to the population of students in Missouri who are homeschooled post-pandemic. Researchers at the PRiME Center estimate that at least 61,000 students in Missouri are homeschooled. This figure represents more than 6 percent of all school-aged children across the state. 

First-year Missouri educators earned just over $34,000 on average for the 2021-22 school year, ranking second-lowest in the nation for average starting teacher pay. Missouri’s 2021-22 average teacher salary was also among the lowest in the country, and less than average teacher pay in all eight border states.