In this brief, we unpack the Missouri Growth Model used to calculate school and district growth scores. We explain how the model works and clarify what it does and does not tell us about school quality.

In this brief, we share an overview of the landscape of school choice in Missouri, with a focus on charter schools. We hope this information will inform legislative debate and ground those discussions in data. We discuss charter school spread, funding, and Missouri voters’ opinions about school choice.

Using school-level data from Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2005 through 2019, we explored between-school disparities in out-of-school suspensions based on school characteristics - racial composition, locality, and socioeconomic status - to track trends and see if schools have made improvements.

In this policy brief, we describe the results of the recent SLU/YouGov Poll and respondents’ thoughts on how leaders have handled the pandemic. We also describe responses to questions on whether Missourians think school should return to in-person instruction.