Missouri Costing-Out Study Finds $913 Million More is Needed

In October 2003, the Missouri Education Coalition for Adequacy (MECA) released the results of the second phase of a costing-out study commissioned in August 2002 to determine an adequate level of funding necessary for Missouri's public schools to meet both state learning standards and federal goals under the "No Child Left Behind" Act. The two-part study uses both the professional judgment and successful schools approaches and concludes that an additional $913 million, beyond the $6.5 billion spent in 2001-2002, was needed to adequately fund Missouri's classrooms that year.

The authors of the study, nationally recognized education finance consultants, suggest a base spending level of $5,428 per student to be adjusted annually for inflation and higher achievement goals. This base cost supports only about a 69 percent achievement level, while 100 percent of students are required to reach proficiency by 2014.

Additional At-Risk Costs

The authors separately calculated costs for students who are low-income, using special education services, or English language learners, which results in an average $7,449 per pupil in 2001-02 when added to the base cost. The study does not include the costs of transportation, food services, or facilities.

MECA describes itself as a non-partisan coalition of education, business, and philanthropic organizations. Carter Ward, the chair of MECA, explains that the study was undertaken, as reported by the Missouri School Boards' Association, "to shift ongoing discussions about school finance from how much money the state has and how it should be distributed to the levels of achievement we are expecting from our children [and] the classroom and school district resources that would be required to attain that level of achievement." The report was presented to a joint interim legislative committee focusing on school finance. The Coalition hopes the committee will utilize this costing-out study while developing a school financing plan for the future of Missouri's schools.

As reported in the Saint-Louis Post-Dispatch, while some called the study an essential "building block" of an effective school finance system in Missouri, others were concerned about the lack of a cost-of-living adjustments for teacher salaries and property costs for districts in different regions of the state.

Prepared October 23, 2003