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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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Missouri School Funding: Rebuild or Patch?
This analysis first appeared in Aligned’s most recent weekly newsletter. We’re expanding it here to add context on the tradeoffs the Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force is weighing as it works toward recommendations due to Governor Mike Kehoe by…
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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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Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights: Top News – State of the states; we break down what Missouri and Kansas governors signaled on education and workforce policy. Missouri Update – Early momentum builds around accountability, open enrollment, child care, and literacy, alongside a closer look…
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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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A Closer Look at Early Literacy in Kansas and Missouri
This post continues our series on literacy policy and practice. Earlier entries traced how reading instruction evolved in the U.S. and why the science of reading has regained prominence. Here, we turn to what the data shows in Kansas and…
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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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Cradle to Career Listening Tour 2025
Overview In 2025, Aligned launched the Cradle to Career Listening Tour with a simple goal: listen first. We traveled across Kansas to hear directly from parents, educators, employers, and community leaders about what is working, what is not, and where…
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A Brief History of Literacy Instruction in America
This post is the second in a series exploring literacy within education policy and practice. In the first blog, we introduced the major methods of teaching reading in the U.S. — phonics, whole language, balanced literacy, and sight word memorization. Here,…
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Update – October 2025
This month’s highlights: Top News – New national polling from the PIE Network reveals a major gap between parents’ perceptions of student achievement and actual performance data. Missouri Update – School Funding Modernization Task Force workgroups are developing early proposals for updating the state’s formula. A new…
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Access nonpartisan research and news about the policies shaping education in Kansas and Missouri.