Our October 2026 Kansas and Missouri education policy update covers new national polling on education priorities, leadership changes and A–F grading in Missouri, and Kansas assessment results and cellphone restrictions.
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New national poll reveals shifting attitudes toward public education
At its annual summit earlier this month, the PIE Network shared results from its latest national education poll, conducted jointly by UpONE Insights and Impact Research.
The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters nationwide, including additional samples of Democratic and Republican primary voters.
The findings showed substantial agreement across political lines about the importance of academic achievement, in addition to differences in how voters perceive the biggest challenges facing schools.
Academic achievement remains a top priority
Across the partisan divide, voters overwhelmingly want schools to prioritize foundational academics. However, while many also recognize that student achievement is a serious concern, parents are considerably more optimistic about their own children.
- 80% of voters rate “ensuring every child performs at grade level in reading, math, and writing” as very important.
- This includes 84% of Democratic primary voters and 82% of Republican primary voters.
- This was also the leading priority in 2025, with an equivalent 80% of voters rating it very important.
Other leading education priorities include school safety (72%) and workforce preparation (71%).
Another finding remained consistent with 2025: Few parents believe their own children are performing below grade level, and many express uncertainty about their children’s classmates.
- When asked to rank their own children’s reading and math skills, only 9% say they are below grade level.
- In ranking their children’s classmates, 39% of parents say they’re at grade level with 43% saying they don’t know.
When presented with national reading results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 91% of voters described the findings as a major problem or crisis.
What’s wrong with public education?
| Group | First concern | Second concern | Third concern |
| All voters | Insufficient funding (28%) | Parental involvement (20%) | Politics (20%) |
| Democratic primary voters | Insufficient funding (36%) | Teacher quality (20%) | Class sizes (18%) |
| Republican primary voters | Parental involvement (28%) | Politics (28%) | School accountability (22%) |
| Parents | Insufficient funding (31%) | Teacher quality (19%) | Parental involvement (18%) |
Source: UpONE and Impact Research, p. 7. These are each group’s most frequently selected concerns, not rankings assigned by all respondents.
Although most voters broadly agree that core academics matter, they have different concerns about the state of education.
- Democrats are more likely to focus on resource problems, like school funding, staffing, and class sizes.
- Republicans identify the roles of parents, politics in schools, and accountability for underperforming schools.
- Parents echo concerns of Republicans and Democrats, naming funding and parent involvement, but also point to teacher quality.
Voters shared a wide variety of problems they perceive with education. But those perceptions also coexist with broad support for specific education policies.
Areas of agreement
Protecting school funding. Despite disagreeing on the adequacy of school funding currently, voters in all groups oppose cutting K-12 funding if their state must reduce its budget. Opposition to funding cuts is shared across party lines, with 87% of Democratic and 71% of Republican primary voters opposing cuts.
Parental choice. Support for parents choosing their children’s educational environment has grown since 2025. Overall, 84% of voters agree that parents, rather than the government, should make these decisions, up from 75% last year. Agreement crosses party lines, including 75% of Democratic and 89% of Republican primary voters.
Testing and accountability. Contrary to the common perception that people broadly oppose standardized testing, 96% of voters believe annual testing is important to determine if students are meeting academic standards.
When explicitly asked about standardized testing, 64% rated annual testing as very important, up from 45% in 2025.
College and career readiness. Voters overwhelmingly (90%) support expanding efforts to ensure every student has an academic or career plan to prepare them with skills for their future careers. However, only 36% of voters believe high school graduates today are prepared for employment. Practical learning opportunities remain popular across political lines.
Voters still place a lot of value in preparing students for life after graduation, but express skepticism that students are properly equipped.
Technology in the classroom. While 63% of voters agree with banning cell phones and restricting distracting content in the classroom, only 26% favored removing all digital technology altogether.
Parents were even more likely to favor this targeted approach (66%). Separately, only 33% of voters believed students were well prepared for a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
Voters seem to favor an approach to classroom technology that addresses distractions and regains student focus without abandoning technology’s instructional benefits.
Looking at the bigger picture, the survey underlines a big disconnect between expectations for public education and where it sits among broader priorities.
Only 20% of voters believe their state’s K-12 schools are headed in the right direction; 21% of voters would say the same for their local schools. However, when asked to identify the two most important issues for their governor and state legislature to address, only 9% said K-12 education.
Instead, affordability and costs dominated at 55%, followed by the economy (35%) and health care (29%).
These findings underscore the challenge education leaders and advocates face. Voters recognize that we need to improve our schools, but those concerns are being crowded out by pocket book issues.
Missouri News
Missouri navigates more leadership change, revisits A-F grading framework
Missouri’s October State Board of Education meeting featured an unexpected leadership change, proposed revisions to the state’s A–F school grading framework, and several other significant policy developments.
More leadership change at DESE
During the closed session of the meeting, Dr. Stacey Preis resigned as Missouri’s Interim Commissioner of Education, effective immediately. She had served in the position since Commissioner Karla Eslinger’s retirement in June.
Speaking with reporters after resigning, Preis said she believed the Board’s agenda would be better served by a different commissioner.
The Board subsequently appointed Lisa Sireno, DESE’s Deputy Commissioner of Learning Services, to serve as the new interim commissioner beginning October 21. Sireno previously oversaw statewide assessment, accountability, and school improvement programs as Assistant Commissioner of DESE’s Office of Quality Schools.
In addition, the Board unanimously approved hiring the K12 Search Group to conduct a national search for Missouri’s next permanent commissioner.
The firm says it specializes in executive leadership searches for charter schools and other K–12 education organizations. The search will be funded by outside philanthropic organizations, although the Board retains authority to select the next commissioner.
Aligned’s Take: We want to thank Dr. Stacey Preis for her service to Missouri’s students and educators, including her willingness to step into the interim commissioner role during a period of significant change. We wish her the very best in her future endeavors.
More changes to the A-F school grading framework
The Board reviewed substantial proposals that would adjust the developing A-F school and district grading framework, approved in September’s Board meeting.
Below is a high-level run down of the proposed changes (you can view the full changes here):
- Student growth. A revised growth-to-proficiency calculation would recognize student progress toward proficiency within three years, including students already meeting academic standards.
- Scoring. District grades would be calculated using student-weighted averages of school building grades.
- Measure weights. The Board placed greater emphasis on student growth in elementary and middle schools and success-ready graduate indicators in high schools. For high schools, the proposed weight for postsecondary readiness would increase from 21% to 30%, while the four-year graduation rate would decrease from 21% to 10%.
Using 2024-25 data, DESE then modeled how these changes would affect school grades.
Among 176 high-poverty K–8 schools, the share that would receive an A or B increased from 14.8% under the original framework to 19.3% under the proposed revisions. However, none of the 19 high-poverty high schools examined received an A or B under either framework.
The proposed adjustments remain under review.
DESE plans to share embargoed preliminary grades and a technical guide with districts, gather feedback, and make further refinements before returning to the Board with recommended adjustments in December. Public grade cards would follow the completion of that process.
Other developments from the meeting
Strategic planning. Bellwether presented a proposed goal to increase third-grade English language arts proficiency to at least 60% and fourth-grade math proficiency to at least 70% by 2035, compared with 42% and 44%, respectively, in 2025.
The Board is expected to consider a focused set of strategic priorities this winter, with detailed implementation strategies developed under the incoming commissioner in 2027.
Teacher certification. The Board considered several orders of rulemaking addressing educator certification and mentoring, including requirements for middle and secondary teachers, English language development certification, and teacher licensure applications.
School finance. The Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force’s October 19 meeting was postponed to November 16. This will be the last meeting before a December 1 deadline to submit recommendations.
Members continue reviewing updated funding models and gathering district feedback, but the latest district-level simulations have not been released publicly.
Want to know more about the Missouri State Board of Education? Check out our new resource: A Guide to the Missouri State Board of Education.
The resource covers what the Board does, how members are appointed, who currently serves, and how to follow its meetings.
Kansas News
Kansas shows modest improvement in reading and math scores
At the October Kansas State Board of Education meeting, state officials highlighted improvements in student and math proficiency in 2026.
The results mark the second year of Kansas’ redesigned statewide assessments, introduced in spring 2025.
Across grades 3–8 and 10, the percentage of students scoring at proficient or advanced levels (Levels 3 and 4) increased in both subjects, while fewer students scored at the lowest performance level (Level 1).
- In English language arts (ELA), 45.9% of students scored proficient or advanced, an increase of 1.46 percentage points from 2025.
- Math proficiency rose 2.27 percentage points to 41.0%. The share of students scoring Level 1 also declined by 1 percentage point in ELA and 1.8 percentage points in math.
Tenth graders recorded the largest improvement in ELA proficiency, increasing 2.8 percentage points, while fifth graders led in math with a 3.2 percentage point increase.
While the results represent progress, more than half of Kansas students continue to score below proficiency in both subjects.
The Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) also released a draft of its 2025–26 annual report, What Matters Most, showing improvements across several other education indicators:
- Chronic absenteeism declined to 17.8% in 2025–26, down from 19.5% the previous year and a pandemic-era high of approximately 24.5%.
- Teacher vacancies decreased 28%, from 2,204 in spring 2025 to 1,588 in spring 2026.
- Structured literacy training continued expanding, with 14,851 Seals of Literacy added to Kansas educators’ licenses as of September.
The findings come as KSDE continues implementing its School Improvement Model, which emphasizes high-quality instruction, evidence-based literacy practices, standards-aligned curriculum, and more useful assessments.
Aligned’s take: Although the latest results show progress, sustained gains in student achievement will be an important measure of the state’s school improvement efforts.
Kansas Attorney General clarifies school cellphone ban requirements
| Storage method | Attorney General’s interpretation |
| Phone in a student’s backpack | Does not comply if the backpack is accessible |
| Phone in an ordinary locker accessible between classes | Does not comply |
| Backpack stored away from students in an inaccessible location all day | May comply |
| Locker students cannot access during the school day | May comply |
On October 16, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach issued a legal opinion in response to questions from Senator Kenny Titus about the state’s new cell phone ban for schools.
The upshot: the opinion states that student backpacks and lockers accessible during the school day do not satisfy the law’s secure storage requirements.
This clarification is sure to affect how some districts implement their cellphone policies going forward. Here’s some important context:
- HB 2299 established a statewide, bell-to-bell ban on students’ personal electronic devices.
- The law required devices to be turned off and securely stored away from students in inaccessible locations throughout the school day, including lunch and passing periods.
- The law did not require districts to use a specific storage product/system to comply.
- Aligned supported the legislation to reduce distractions during the school day.
As districts prepared for the school year, they adopted different approaches to storing student devices. Sen. Titus and others sought clarification of the law’s requirements.
Take the example of Pittsburg USD 250 for instance. Back in August, Superintendent J.B. Elliot told KRPS that high school students would keep phones in backpacks because the building lacks lockers. Elliot asserted that powered off phones in a backpack, even carried by students, would satisfy the law’s requirements.
The Attorney General’s opinion explicitly rejects this assertion, stating the backpack itself needs to be inaccessible for the entire school day.
Another example: Morris County, KS USD 417. The district posted their initial cell phone policy that differentiated standards by grade level.
- Pre-K through 3rd grade: phones off in backpacks.
- Grades 4-12: phones stored in Yondr locking pouches.
For districts like Morris County, compliance depends on whether backpacks are inaccessible to the students throughout the school day.
Ultimately, the Attorney General identifies two minimum conditions to comply: a) devices must be away from students and b) inaccessible during the school day.
Storing phones in lockers will not qualify under this opinion if students open them between classes, and backpacks would only qualify if they were inaccessible.
How many districts are out of compliance? We don’t know yet. However, with this new opinion, districts have more specific guidance to comply with state law. We expect districts to modify their policies in the coming weeks.