This Week’s Highlights: Top story — Missouri lawmakers advance major early literacy reforms in both chambers, focusing on prevention, intervention, and clearer expectations for third grade reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

This opinion piece originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch . By Eric Syverson, Director of Policy & Research, Aligned. Across the nation, skepticism toward statewide assessment is rising

This month's highlights: Top News – The U.S. Department of Education announced over $1.1 billion in redirected funding, with investments for HBCUs, TCUs, charter schools, and civics programs. Missouri

Money matters. But money alone doesn’t guarantee better results. The Aligned Data Matrix is our education finance data hub that lets you compare funding and student outcomes across Missouri school