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After months of major design questions, members of the Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force began to converge on key design choices that will shape an eventual proposal.
While the previous meeting focused primarily on property tax issues — relying on old property values and uneven assessment practices — this meeting began to wrestle with what kind of formula is both politically and fiscally viable.
The wide ranging discission spanned multiple core elements of a new formula, but a few themes stood out.
Performance incentives: Growth, not achievement
The task force finally turned their attention to the recommendations of the Performance Incentives working group, which recommended differentiated incentives by grade span:
- Early literacy in elementary schools;
- Math and English language arts in middle schools; and,
- College and career readiness in high schools.
Throughout the discussion, members showed a clear preference for focusing on student growth to proficiency rather than relying solely on achievement levels.
At the same time, there was less appetite for layering additional bonus funding for specific student populations, like students from low-income backgrounds and English language learners. Instead, task force members gestured toward using the formula itself to account for student needs by using higher weights.
A formula built around a flawed property tax system
Building on last month’s meeting, the task force presented updated information which enabled a more productive discussion.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) presented data from the State Tax Commission that reinforced the problem with uneven assessment practices. The data shows that about 60% of students reside in counties assessing residential properties below 90% of their expected market value.
This fact alone complicates any effort to modernize the formula.
Since the current system relies on property values from 2004-05 while assessment practices vary significantly, the current formula both misstates districts true local funding capacity and distributes state funding in ways that reflect inconsistent assessment practices as well as actual differences in wealth.
The task force continues to explore an alternative measure for local funding capacity that incorporates community income levels via a combined wealth index.
One reason why this keeps coming up is that it could make the formula less reliant on property taxes as a measure of funding effort, and therefore less sensitive to uneven county practices.
These enormous issues aside, the task force also returned to the idea of rewarding higher local property tax rates. However, data shared with the group showed that property-wealthy districts would disproportionately benefit due to their already high mill levies.
A consensus on counting students?
Despite earlier discussion of moving to a fully enrollment-based student count, the task force spoke favorably about maintaining the current hybrid approach. Missouri is already phasing toward a 50/50 blend of enrollment and attendance, and members showed little appetite to revisit that direction.
The implications are straightforward. A hybrid count lowers the total number of students included in the formula, which in turn reduces the overall cost of the model. That fiscal impact appears to be part of the appeal.
More notably, the discussion suggested this is less an open policy question than a settled one. There was a clear sense that the legislature has already made its preference known, and that the task force is unlikely to recommend a departure from that approach.
Affordability is shaping the model
The meeting concluded with another look at the State Adequacy Target, or the state’s assumed base amount of funding per student.
DESE presented revised adequacy targets based on multi-year averages and an expanded comparison group of top-performing districts. Across all scenarios, the resulting State Adequacy Target came in below earlier estimates above $11,000 per student, ranging from $9,481 to $10,248.
Those differences are driven by design choices.
- A longer, four-year averaging period smooths spending and lowers the target, while expanding the pool to 125 districts further reduces the estimate.
- Shorter timeframes and a pool of 100 districts push the target higher.
More importantly, cost is becoming front and center in shaping the overall formula model. Multi-year averaging, a larger comparison group, and potential phase-ins all point toward keeping the formula within what the state can afford, even if that lowers the headline number.
One major topic absent from the meetings thus far: the hold harmless provision. More than one third (178) of districts in Missouri are off formula and are provided funding levels equal to what they received in 2004-05. Members discussed the idea of phasing in a new formula, making it a key issue the task force will eventually address.
The meeting suggests the task force is moving from identifying problems to narrowing in on a workable solution.
Aligned’s take: The task force’s direction is becoming clearer, as are the constraints. The priority should be getting the formula right and making sure it is sound and sustainable. Affordability matters, but it should follow from good design, not drive it.
Missouri News
Missouri’s teacher workforce: The “missing middle” problem
Missouri’s teacher workforce isn’t as stable as it looks. A new Aligned analysis shows the state’s educator pipeline is increasingly shaped like an “hourglass”: more novice teachers entering the profession, more veteran teachers nearing retirement, and a shrinking group in the middle.
That missing middle matters. Teachers with 7–15 years serve as mentors, instructional leaders, and the backbone of school stability. Missouri is losing those educators at a time when schools are being asked to implement major initiatives, including pending literacy reforms.
At the same time, retention among new teachers has dropped to a decade low, and a growing share of the workforce is nearing retirement.
The result is a system that is maintaining headcount but losing experience, creating real risks for instructional quality and long-term stability.
This blog serves as the first in a series examining Missouri’s educator workforce. Over the next three weeks, Aligned will release accompanying reports that take a deeper look at:
- Where the “missing middle” is most pronounced across grades and subjects
- How districts are responding to workforce pressures, including shifts in teacher credentials
Ultimately, these pieces point to a clear conclusion: Missouri cannot recruit its way out of this challenge alone; it must focus on retaining and developing teachers over time.
Missouri Senate Education Committee alters A-F accountability
While HB 2710 would still create an A-F accountability rating system for public schools, the Senate Education Committee made three notable changes from the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives.
First, the bill modifies how the bill defines and describes student growth.
- The House version of the bill directs the DESE to develop a new growth measure which examines if students are making progress to reach grade level expectations within a set time frame.
- The Senate Substitute now would reframe this idea as a students’ “growth to proficiency.”
Why this shift matters: it clarifies what the metric is doing in practice. Together with traditional measures like proficiency rates (how many students are at grade level today) and value-added growth (how much students improved relative to expectations), this new measure will show if students are improving fast enough to catch up.
That matters because measures for achievement, value-added growth, and growth to proficiency are all built into the A-F rating system.
- For elementary and middle school ratings: Achievement makes up 40%, whereas value-added growth and growth to proficiency account for 30%.
- Achievement, value-added growth and growth to proficiency each represent 25% of a high school’s rating, with the remaining 25% driven by graduation rates and “success-ready” indicators tied to postsecondary and workforce outcomes.
The Senate’s version also removes the inclusion of a school climate rating into the overall rating system, which was included by the House. That score would have been based on surveys and other discipline data. The change inherently narrows the system’s focus: academic outcomes and growth.
Finally, the Senate added new financial transparency requirements. The new requirements would see districts and charter schools publish detailed, transaction-level spending data online regularly.
Missouri joins growing ed-tech backlash
On Monday, the Missouri House passed HB 2230 by a wide margin (143-10). The vote tells us that the growing backlash to classroom technology is shifting from a topic of culture to policy.
The legislation would not ban devices but require that schools set limits for students according to grade level, prioritize traditional materials, and justify how tech benefits instruction.
This is a notable shift considering the last 6 years. Concerns about screen time, distraction, and overuse of tech are real. However, it’s worth pausing to think whether technology addresses some of the deeper, longstanding challenges: if schools have high-quality instructional materials, and ways to support teachers in the classroom.
Missouri is not alone; Kansas lawmakers considered — but did not pass — similar legislation (SB 350) this session.
Aligned will return to this topic soon.
Kansas News
Kansas adds voter check to property taxes
Before adjourning last Friday, Kansas lawmakers narrowly passed long-awaited property tax reform in HB 2745. School districts drive a large share of property tax collections, so how they’re treated under this policy matters.
The big takeaway: Kansas is keeping its property tax disclosure system and adding a way for voters to stop property tax increases in some cases.
To understand the proposed change, it would be helpful to start with what the state already does.
- Under currently law, Kansas uses a “revenue neutral rate,” which means taxing authorities use the tax rate that would raise the same total property tax revenue as the last year.
- When cities, counties, school districts, or other taxing authorities want to collect more than that, they must notify taxpayers and hold public hearings and vote to exceed that rate.
Kansas has a system designed to address “silent” tax increases, where property values rise and tax bills go up without an explicit decision to raise rates. The law requires local governments to make those increases visible through public notice and formal vote.
That approach is known as “Truth in Taxation.”
These laws are designed to prevent increases from happening quietly by requiring notice, public hearings, and a formal vote. But they do not limit how much property tax revenue can grow. Local governments can still increase collections if they follow the process.
HB 2745 builds on that system by adding a new step.
- Under the bill, if a taxing authority proposes to increase property tax collections beyond last year’s (adjusted for inflation up to 3%), then tax payers can file a protest petition.
- If 10% of registered voters likewise file protest petitions, then the increase is blocked and the governing authority is required to adopt a budget within the prior revenue limit.
On one hand, this would give taxpayers a direct tool to stop certain increases, not just weigh in on them. On the other hand, it does not create a hard cap for increases, which can still move forward if too few voters organize to stop them.
School districts are still covered by Truth in Taxation rules, but the bill keeps an exception for the statewide school levy.
- If an increase comes only from that levy, it is treated differently than other increases.
- Since schools make up a large share of most property tax bills, that exception could affect how much relief taxpayers could see.
Overall, the bill does not place a hard cap on property taxes. Instead, it adds a new protest mechanism into the state’s existing transparency system.
However, the bill only just passed 63-59 and 22-18 out of the House and Senate respectively. Coupled with many big cities, counties, and other taxing authorities opposing the policy, it’s anyone’s guess if Governor Laura Kelly will sign the bill into law.