PRiME Center Analyses that Inform 2021 Legislative Bills

Jan 8

Informing Missouri’s 2021 Debate

By: Aaron Park & Emily Cupito

As Missouri prepares for the start of the 2021 legislative session, analyses from the PRiME Center can inform discussions about education issues. In this blog, we highlight the PRiME Center’s products that may be useful to legislators this year. To do so, we reference the list of pre-filed bills and highlight our work that informs each topic.

The PRiME Center’s work on virtual education relates to bills HB 243 and SB 95 which attempt to modify enrollment requirements and oversight of virtual education and discuss funding distribution, tracking student progress, and families' decision-making authority to enroll. Students and their families will likely find the Center’s list of resources for home learning useful. Furthermore, PRiME’s analysis of technology implications for Missouri public schools during COVID-19 helps policymakers better understand the technology access gap for Missouri’s districts and plan ways to address this gap.

The Center’s work on charter schools, voter preferences, and school funding is relevant to HB 137 and SB 218, which focus on local equity in charter school funding. For example, a PRiME policy brief on Missouri charter school funding sheds light on how school funding works for Missouri’s charter schools. A recent SLU/YouGovpoll revealed that Missourians support school choice and increasing school funding. Finally, a PRiME brief on recessionary school funding discusses funding inequities among Missouri districts.

Our work on school discipline relates to bills HB 119 and HB 387, which involve seclusion and restraint policies for Missouri districts. PRiME briefs on school discipline disparities in Missouri and trauma-informed and restorative practices provide information about how to build relationships and prevent circumstances in which using seclusion and restraints become necessary.

PRiME’s work also informs discussions about competency-based education. SB 33 and SB 35 establish a task force and a grant program for competency-based education. Competency-based education transitions away from earning credit purely based on seat time and instead focuses on content mastery. To measure content mastery, districts may adopt a different grading system from a traditional A-F system. A PRiME policy brief on Standards-Based Report Cards provides information on standards-based report cards including which Missouri districts currently use them.

Our work also relates to school governance. Pre-filed bills HB 164, HB 207, HB 253, and HB 335 involve local district governance and allow school districts to divide into subdistricts. A PRiME policy brief on public school governance and a related blog on the importance of governance in public schools, discuss public school governance in detail and provide Missouri context.

The PRiME Center will monitor new education bills as they arrive and will share relevant analyses to these new bills. As a research organization focused on providing rigorous, objective analyses, we hope that our work can lead to more informed discussions and decisions. Ultimately, using evidence and data to inform discussions will mean better policies and better schools.