This report examines teacher pension plans in Missouri, with a particular focus on the Kansas City and Saint Louis school districts. Missouri is unusual in that public educators are divided among three pension systems: the Kansas City Public School Retirement System (KC), which covers 3 percent of Missouri teachers; the Public School Retirement…

In "Missouri Charter Schools and Teacher Pension Plans: How Well Do Existing Pension Plans Serve Charter and Urban Teachers?" the authors stated that there is no reciprocity between the three Missouri teacher pension plans, based on their understanding that employer contributions could not transfer between plans. That statement is…

For all the national and even international debate about the state of American education, public schooling in the U.S. is still a local matter--and the school district remains its hub. As administrators know, there's nothing abstract about the process of getting millions of students into their seats, assuring they receive the instruction they're…

This report compares the demand for public education in St. Louis during the 2007-08 school year with both the supply and location of public schools operated by St. Louis Public Schools and charter schools. The geographic areas of analysis are the city of St. Louis and its zip codes. The first four sections of this report contain background…

Service learning involves providing service to the community while requiring students to meet learning goals in a specific course. A service learning project was implemented in a general biology course at Rockhurst University to involve students in promoting scientific education in conjunction with community partner educators. Students were…

Across the U.S., urban school districts are losing students and shuttering schools. In Detroit, some 35,000 students have left the city schools in less than a decade, and the city will close 34 schools and reassign more than 10,000 students in 2006. However, the trend is not limited to Rust Belt cities like Detroit, although their problems tend to…