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Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights: Top story — Missouri’s literacy infrastructure is in place, but implementation is lagging. New state data shows just 34% of PreK-5 teachers have completed or enrolled in science-of-reading training, even as a rural coaching collaborative delivers striking early results. Kansas —…
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Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights: Top story — New statewide data from the Kansas Teacher Retention Initiative offers a clearer picture of where the educator pipeline is most at risk, with mid-career teachers emerging as the highest retention concern. Kansas — Lawmakers preview action on a proposed cell phone…
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Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights: Top Story – Missouri Funding Task Force: The Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force held its first full meeting of 2026, surfacing major design choices around funding targets and student counts — and the tension between building a durable formula and managing…
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Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights: Top News – Federal update: Congress advances FY 2026 education and early childhood funding while states await key ESSA waiver decisions that could reshape accountability and implementation. Kansas Update – Committee activity heats up: Lawmakers dig into Blueprint for…
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Update – December 2025
This Month’s highlights: Top News – Aligned released its 2026 policy priorities, outlining opportunities to strengthen literacy, school finance, data systems, and early learning. Kansas Preview – We review the State Board of Education’s newly adopted legislative priorities and take a first look at the slow pre-filing…
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Kansas Requests Federal Waiver to Unify School Accountability Systems
On Monday, October 27, Kansas joined the increasing number of states seeking to waive certain requirements of federal education law. Specifically, the waiver seeks to make a unified accountability system, merging the current state and federal systems into one within four years. This…
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Op-ed: Why standardized testing still matters in Missouri
This opinion piece originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. By Eric Syverson, Director of Policy & Research, Aligned. Across the nation, skepticism toward statewide assessment is rising. Teachers and families increasingly question whether traditional testing supports learning or just consumes valuable instructional…
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Update – September 2025
This month’s highlights: Top News – The U.S. Department of Education announced over $1.1 billion in redirected funding, with investments for HBCUs, TCUs, charter schools, and civics programs.Missouri Update – Working groups of the School Funding Modernization Task Force began meeting, including one that now features Aligned’s own Torree…
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Introducing the Aligned Data Matrix
Money matters. But money alone doesn’t guarantee better results. The Aligned Data Matrix is our education finance data hub that lets you compare funding and student outcomes across Missouri school districts, visualize patterns over time, and identify where investment and achievement diverge. Use it…
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Update – August 2025
This month’s highlights: Top Story — Testing & accountability at a crossroads: what the research says, why it matters now, and how systems should evolve. Missouri Update — Funding Formula Modernization Task Force hears Bellwether’s best-practice options; plus Missouri’s SRSA pilot launches, moving…
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Missouri to Pilot a New Way to Test Students
For years, educators have raised a problem with assessments: testing students only after instruction ends, when it’s too late to help them improve. Traditionally, states have used end-of-year exams to measure student performance against academic standards, but those tests do little to inform day-to-day…
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Update – June 2025
This month’s highlights: Top News — Federal debates on the child tax credit and student loans gain momentum, while the Supreme Court lets Oklahoma’s religious charter school ruling stand. Missouri Update — Special session ends with new property tax ballot measures; the school funding task force begins work…