Show-Me Institute

09/02/2026

Curious how staffing has changed in your own Missouri school district over the last 25 years?

Our data dashboard lets you compare teacher and administrator trends with enrollment since 2000.

Missouri's public schools have seen a massive surge in personnel. Discover the surprising numbers and what it means for your local schools. Did staffing outpace enrollment growth? Find out now!

09/01/2026

We have the preliminary results from the 2026 Missouri Assessment Program, and the story remains the same: Missouri kids are struggling badly with reading:

The preliminary results for the 2026 Missouri Assessment Program were recently released to the public. Student performance in mathematics was encouraging, as scores have now surpassed their pre-pandemic levels. Of […]

08/28/2026

"We can either spend more per teacher or hire more teachers, and we're consistently choosing the latter."

Cory Koedel and Avery Frank joined Susan Pendergrass on the Show-Me Institute Podcast to discuss their new report on Missouri's public school personnel boom.

Listen to the full episode and read the report: https://bit.ly/4gXn5B5

08/27/2026

St. Louis has been pretty good at keeping housing prices low for a very long time.

Low housing prices are great, but it's just as important that people actually want to live in St. Louis:

I just saw “Meet Me in St. Louis” at the Muny a few weeks ago, so St. Louis at the start of the 20th century has been on my mind. […]

08/27/2026

NEW REPORT: Missouri added 12.8% more teachers and 34.9% more administrators since 2000, even though student enrollment fell 4.1% in that same time.

Our latest report digs into the numbers behind Missouri's school staffing boom.

Teacher and administrator numbers in Missouri are skyrocketing while student enrollment falls. Could this 'personnel boom' be costing teachers raises? Find out how much more they could earn.

08/27/2026

New from Susan Pendergrass: It's time to let go of our nostalgia for the school system of the last century; the Missouri it was built for has changed, and the sooner we accept that, the better off our kids will be.

In the 2024–25 school year, Missouri spent a total of $17.5 billion on our 855,000 K–12 public education students — just over $20,400 per student.

08/25/2026

St. Louis wants new data centers to run on renewable energy, but the plan picks winners: solar and wind count, while zero-emission nuclear doesn't.

A few weeks ago, the City of St. Louis issued a proposal that would require new data center developments to use renewable energy for their operations, among many other requirements. […]

08/21/2026

The Luminary Park project is the latest Kansas City project to get rejected in a bid for federal funding.

Roy Blunt Luminary Park, the much-discussed plan to build a park over four blocks of I-670 in downtown Kansas City, just missed another federal grant application, according to the Kansas […]

08/21/2026

"Missouri's budget is broken."

A recent report from Missouri's auditor reiterated what has been clear for some time: Missouri needs to get its fiscal house in order, and quickly:

“Missouri’s budget is broken.” That’s the conclusion of Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s June report on the state’s fiscal outlook. While much of the report focuses on Missouri’s oft-discussed unsustainable […]

08/18/2026

Missouri is between a rock and a hard place in its efforts to modernize its electricity grid:

Recently KBIA reported on a new coalition in the energy sector: Electric companies in the Midwest say new large scale power lines are needed to get more energy onto the […]