Missouri’s public schools are about to get report cards of their own. Possibly as soon as December, the state plans to hand public schools, charter schools and districts a single letter grade from A to F. The people who run those schools say the rollout has been rushed, the formula is unproven, and the program is not yet funded in the state budget.
What is actually happening
The grades trace back to Executive Order 26-01, which Gov. Mike Kehoe signed on Jan. 13. It directs the state to publish annual A-F “grade cards,” reasoning that families find the current school accountability reports hard to interpret.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) already publishes performance reports on every district and school. The letter grades are meant to sit on top of those reports, not replace them.
The State Board of Education approved the framework in September on an 8-1 vote. On Oct. 20, the board discussed adjustments and cleared DESE to share a technical guide and preliminary scores with districts, according to the Missouri Independent. Some outlets reported the changes as approved. Public release was earlier pushed back so districts could see their ratings first. DESE has not set a firm public release date, and a department official has said December is possible, much sooner than the spring 2027 date first discussed.
How a school earns its grade
Elementary and middle school grades weigh three things: academic achievement, “value-added” growth, and a newer measure called growth to proficiency, which asks whether a student is on track to reach grade-level proficiency within three years. High schools add the state’s Success-Ready Graduate measure and the four-year graduation rate. The raw material is Missouri Assessment Program test scores plus college-readiness exams such as the ACT and SAT.
The adjustments discussed in October, as KY3 reported them, put more weight on student improvement, break out scores by subject (math, literacy and science), and move the cutoff for an A to 90.
Several details matter for parents. Early grades are not expected to include the new literacy measure, which DESE has said will arrive with the full report cards in fall 2027. A school that tests fewer than 95 percent of its students on required state assessments has its grade lowered by one letter. The executive order also urges the board to raise each cutoff by five points the following year if 65 percent of schools earn an A or B. Only public and charter schools get graded; private schools may opt in. ABC17 reported that the grades will not affect accreditation or funding.
Why schools aren’t happy
Nobody has seen the numbers. In September, school leaders told reporters they did not know how their districts would score or whether the report could be trusted. Superintendents asked the State Board for more time to review scores and the methodology. Some administrators also objected to a short window for districts to correct bad data.
One letter, one test. The Missouri School Boards’ Association says it supports accountability and transparency, but it worries families will see a letter without any context, including whether a school has the resources to meet state standards. The Missouri State Teachers Association argues that A-F grades change labels rather than learning and add pressure to teach to the test. Judy Young, a parent and public-education organizer writing in the Missouri Independent, says the grades rest mainly on one standardized test and that low-graded schools will not get extra money or help from the state.
Teacher recruitment. A Kansas City teachers’ union leader warned that educators may avoid F-rated schools for fear the label will follow their careers. That could make it harder for the schools with the greatest needs to hire strong teachers.
Who pays for it? The setup is estimated to cost $1.2 million in the first year and $715,000 a year after that. That money was not allocated in the state budget that began July 1. The numbers have also shifted: in August, DESE asked for more than $500,000 in supplemental funding for fiscal 2027 and another $6.5 million for fiscal 2028.
Promises of support. Board member Kerry Casey told the Oct. 20 meeting that the grades will lead to support and resources, not punishment. School administrators in the audience answered with a loud “No.” Casey acknowledged that the board’s budget action makes that harder: in September it declined to ask for the roughly $300 million increase needed to fully fund the state’s school funding formula.
Lawmakers never signed off. The Missouri House passed a bill creating the system 96-53, but it faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate, where lawmakers said it leaned too heavily on outdated state tests. The bill failed, so the board is moving ahead under the governor’s executive order. Kehoe has said he wants the legislation to return.
Leadership turmoil. On Oct. 20, Interim Education Commissioner Stacey Preis resigned effective immediately, just before the board went into closed session. She said no one had directly told her to resign, though there was speculation the board might remove her, and she questioned adding one more grading system on top of the state’s existing measures. The board named DESE Deputy Commissioner Lisa Sireno interim commissioner the next day. The board has hired a search firm to find a permanent commissioner. Board members’ reactions to the plan were mixed: some called it redundant, and member Vincent Schoemehl Jr. said people respond better to inspiration than threats.
The biggest critique: grades that track poverty
Florida created the A-F model in 1999, and more than a dozen states have since adopted some version of it. Critics point to what happened there. In analyses of ratings from the 2010s, education analyst Matthew DiCarlo of the Shanker Institute found that Florida’s lowest-poverty schools were almost guaranteed good grades, while roughly two-thirds of its highest-poverty schools received a C or lower. North Carolina’s own education department reported in 2018 that 69 percent of schools where more than 81 percent of students came from low-income families received a D or F. The state’s formula at launch counted achievement for 80 percent of the grade and growth for 20 percent.
The argument is that a letter grade can end up measuring who a school enrolls instead of what it does for them. DiCarlo’s criticism of Florida was that its grades leaned on absolute test scores more than on growth.
Missouri’s version puts heavy emphasis on growth, and DESE officials say it is designed to reward schools most when students move up from the bottom. In a St. Louis Business Journal column, Casey wrote that nearly two-thirds of an elementary or middle school’s proposed grade is tied to growth. Some education researchers back that approach. Collin Hitt of Saint Louis University’s Prime Center has called Missouri’s growth method the best in the nation, and Cory Koedel of the Show-Me Institute and the University of Missouri says achievement scores track local demographics more closely than growth does and that he would weight growth more heavily. DESE also asked the board whether to adjust grades for school demographics, and some members opposed the idea at first, fearing it would overcomplicate the reports or create unequal standards. Whether the formula blunts the poverty effect is still an open question. The first public grades will be the first real test, and it is worth checking how they line up with school poverty rates once they are public.
What supporters say
Supporters say the appeal is simplicity: everyone knows what an A or an F means, and surveys show parents and voters want clear information. DESE Deputy Commissioner Lisa Sireno has described the grades as public transparency that puts the most attention on students furthest behind. Board member Kerry Casey, a founding board member of KIPP charter schools in St. Louis, says the result will be support for schools, not punishment.
The public also appears to be on their side. A February St. Louis University/YouGov poll found 60 percent of Missouri voters supported A-F grades and fewer than 20 percent opposed them, including about 48 percent of Democrats. Most respondents graded their own local district a B or a C.
Some research backs the idea that grades can spur improvement. Studies in Florida and New York City found that schools given failing grades went on to raise test scores. Researchers caution, though, that this does not show letter grades beat other kinds of report cards, and that they mostly measured effects on low-performing schools. Some community groups also plan to put the grades to use: one Kansas City organization says it will use them to pick its next school investments.
A cautionary tale from Texas
Texas shows what can happen when the rules change midstream. After the state changed how it calculates A-F ratings, more than 90 districts joined a lawsuit arguing they were not given enough notice, and a judge ordered the state not to release the ratings. The 2023 ratings came out in April 2025 after an appeals court ruling, and the 2024 and 2025 ratings followed in August 2025.
Missouri has shifted its release timeline more than once and is weighing changes to its scoring scale during the approval process, and superintendents have raised concerns about review time and data corrections. No Missouri lawsuit has been reported.
What to watch
- The first release, possibly in December: which districts land where, and whether grades follow poverty.
- Whether the legislature takes up the bill again next session.
- Who becomes the next permanent education commissioner.
- Whether the state funds the program, and what support, if any, follows a low grade.