Missouri State Board of Education

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education believes that lowering a GPA requirement for teachers will improve teacher recruitment and retention without reducing educator quality.

Missouri child care providers began complaining that they were missing months of payments from the state and were close to shuttering. But the state won't meet its goal to clear the backlog by the end of October.

The Independence School District transitioned to a four-day week with the hope to attract and retain more teachers. Applications skyrocketed after it made the switch, but a new Missouri law may do away with the shortened schedule.

The backlog, which has left daycare providers on the brink of closure, was originally supposed to be resolved by the end of July. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has largely blamed a contracted vendor.

Belton, Grandview, Kearney and Park Hill school districts join others receiving waivers to stop relying on the Missouri Assessment Program.

Last year, the State Board of Education and the Missouri Charter Public School Commission pulled the charter of Kansas City's Genesis School, a K-8 school with a focus on high-risk students. But an appeals court ruled that charters have the right to judicial review if the state attempts to shut them down.

Over 30% of Missouri school districts, mostly in rural parts of the state, have shortened their school weeks to four days as a responsive to chronic teacher shortages. As larger districts like Independence adopt the practice, state lawmakers are considering bills to reign it in.

Schools are still struggling to raise attendance rates and student performance to where they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Plus, school districts are preparing for a new law in Kansas that allows students to transfer to schools outside the district where they live.

Missouri's education department has released new performance data finding chronic absenteeism remains a problem for many schools. Attendance rates have dropped in Missouri by 10% since 2019, and they're especially low for Black students.

Missouri’s Board of Education changed a rule this week that had prevented many child care providers from accessing the $26 million in grant funding allocated by lawmakers.

Karla Eslinger, a Republican state senator from Wasola, will succeed current commissioner Margie Vandeven in the state's top education job in June 2024.

Missouri’s state board of education decided to provide schools with optional guidelines on social-emotional learning to help them cope with worsening student behavior. Commissioners are concerned about potential political pushback to the learning standards, which have been criticized by conservatives.