Missouri Families Need the “Unsafe School Choice Option”
A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When asked why they want school choice, families often...
Schools After the Storm with Noah Devine
Susan Pendergrass speaks with Noah Devine, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public Schools Association, about how charter schools in St. Louis are responding after the recent tornado damaged multiple campuses.
New State Board of Education Has a Long To-Do List
A version of this commentary appeared in the Columbia Missourian. Governor Kehoe has appointed four new members to the Missouri...
HB 1044 and Expanding Charter Schools in Missouri
Senate Bill (SB) 727, passed into law last year, allows any state-approved sponsor to authorize a charter school in Boone...
SLPS and MoSchoolRankings
With ongoing reports about St. Louis Public Schools’s (SLPS) finances, I was interested to learn that SLPS had created nine...
Rising Concerns about St. Louis’s Teacher Pension Fund
KSDK recently ran a report on a topic familiar to Show-Me Institute readers: teacher pensions. The report, titled “Growing pension...
St. Louis Public Schools Exemplifies the Need for Educational Transparency
St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) has been in the news a lot recently, and not for the best reasons. The...
Do Private Schools “Choose” Their Students?
Opponents of school choice are great at coming up with witty one liners to make their point. A recurring example...
Desperate Measures for Desperate Times
In the spring 2022 assessments, just 13.4 percent of the students in St. Louis’s traditional public schools scored on grade...
Missouri Charter School Students Win
Missouri’s two flagship cities—St. Louis and Kansas City—face myriad challenges, such as declining population in St. Louis and high rates...
Open Enrollment in St. Louis Schools: 55 Years in the Making
A version of this commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When the Spainhower Commission issued its final report in 1968,...
The Missouri House Has Taken a Stand for Parents
It’s past time the Missouri Senate steps up to the plate and delivers for Missouri Parents. The House has done...
If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It
Some things are hard to face—the scale, your checking account balance—but ignoring them doesn’t make problems magically go away. The...
Yes, Mr. Pratt, Critical Race Theory is Being Taught and Trained in Missouri K-12
Wes Pratt is the chief diversity officer of Missouri State University, and late last week Mr. Pratt gave a presentation...
It Doesn’t Work That Way
The St. Louis Board of Alderman just passed a symbolic resolution to ban any new schools (read charter schools) as...
We Need Actions, Not Words
Greater St. Louis Inc. has just released the results of its year of discussions with community members about how to...
What the Heck Is Happening Out There?
In the midst of a pandemic, it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on. But here is a bit of...
Who’s Afraid of Charter Schools?
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board wrote a fearmongering editorial about charter schools becoming a potential option for suburban parents....
Failure Is Not an Option for Missouri School Districts-but Is That a Good Thing?
Imagine that you’re a professor at a large university and this spring you’re teaching one of the big freshman seminar...
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
On November 19, the Missouri State Board of Education met in a closed session to determine who would be selected...
