What about charter, virtual, private, home and MOScholars?
Missouri has 518 public school districts. Most maps on this site cover the 516 geographic districts in the analytical panel; the Special School District of St. Louis County and the Pemiscot County Special School District serve across multiple component districts and do not appear as separate map polygons. Missouri families also use charter schools, virtual programs, private schools, home and Family Paced Education, and MOScholars. Those categories do not fit one pie chart: some are public schools, some are ways of delivering instruction, and one is a funding program that can pay for several kinds of services.
This page reports what can be compared, says plainly where data are not publicly available, and does not treat a missing number as evidence for or against an educational option.
The statewide count is 518 public school districts. The mapped panel follows the other 516 as geographic districts with a federal NCES boundary and a local tax base. The two special school districts remain part of Missouri public education, but their service areas overlap component districts rather than forming two additional ordinary attendance-boundary polygons. That makes 516 a useful analytical universe, not a claim that Missouri has only 516 districts or that every Missouri child attends within this panel.
516
geographic public districts in this site’s mapped panel.
SITE PANEL · CURRENT
566
local districts and charter schools in DESE’s explicitly dated 2024–25 Public Education Snapshot.
DESE SNAPSHOT · 2024–25
896,167
K–12 public-school students in that snapshot. Charter and full-time public virtual students are already inside this total.
DESE SNAPSHOT · 2024–25
Why other DESE pages show 554 or 556. DESE’s undated Moving to Missouri page still uses 554, the same count found in a May 2021 agency announcement. A 2024–25 vacancy report uses 556 district and charter employers in its workforce-reporting universe. Those are different dates or reporting universes, and this site will not invent a crosswalk to make them add up.
These are not separate slices. Charter schools and full-time MOCAP students are already public education. MOScholars is a scholarship-account program, not a school type. A single additive chart would double-count students and mix incompatible years.
WHERE DID THE STUDENTS GO?
Since 1991, the bigger story is movement within Missouri
The district maps show losses in many communities, but statewide district enrollment did not simply disappear. In the matched 516-district panel, cities and rural districts lost enrollment while suburbs and towns gained it.
Student totals in the current 516-district panel, grouped by each district’s current NCES community type.
Community type
1991 students
2025 students
Change
City
186,086
148,688
−20.1%
Suburb
254,514
304,636
+19.7%
Town
158,453
180,056
+13.6%
Rural
210,001
192,695
−8.2%
All mapped districts
809,054
826,075
+2.1%
The statewide peak came later. These same districts enrolled 884,611 students in 2000, about 58,500 more than in 2025. The long arc is therefore both a redistribution story and a statewide decline from the 2000 peak.
This table cannot track individual children. It does not tell whether one student moved, graduated, attended a charter or private school, entered a virtual program, or was never born into the later cohort. Charter, private, virtual and home/FPE figures use different years and overlapping definitions, so no responsible statewide source can divide the 58,500 decline into neat destinations. Explore the district enrollment evidence →
PUBLIC OPTIONS
Charter schools and MOCAP remain public education
Both operate outside the ordinary geographic-district pattern, but both remain inside Missouri’s public-school accountability system.
36
operating charter program/LEA entries in this site’s July 31 reconstruction of DESE’s detailed directory, with 78 building-code entries. Charters are tuition-free public schools overseen through sponsors and charter contracts. They report through Core Data/MOSIS, participate in state assessment and APR, and submit public financial audits. They do not have a geographic district boundary or a local property-tax base.
DESE DETAILED DIRECTORY · SITE RECONSTRUCTION · JULY 31, 2026
MOCAP
MOCAP includes individual online courses and full-time hosted public programs. Full-time students participate in state testing and public accountability, but resident, host, enrollment, APR and state-aid assignments must be separated before district effects are analyzed.
RESIDENT/HOST CROSSWALK · AWAITING DESE RESPONSE
DESE’s current charter page conflicts with itself. One passage says 36 programs operate in 74 buildings; another says 37 programs operate in 81 buildings. The detailed directory contains 40 named entries. DESE’s Charter Schools director separately identified Lee A. Tolbert Community Academy and St. Louis Voices Academy of Media Arts as closing, and Julia Lee Performing Arts Academy and Frontier STEM Academy – Columbia as opening in fall 2027. Separating those four entries leaves the 36 operating entries and 78 building-code entries shown above. DESE has not reconciled the two headlines, defined “program” for this count or supplied effective closure dates, so 36 and 78 are a transparent site reconstruction, not a newly confirmed agency total.Review DESE’s directory →
Enrollment remains a separate question. DESE directed this project to the Missouri Comprehensive Data System, which provides public reports for individual districts and charters, but the response did not supply a dated statewide charter-enrollment total or a current LEA/building crosswalk. This site will not add together entries from an undated selector and call the result a statewide enrollment count.
What is settled for MOCAP: the 2024–25 annual report identifies 2,256 course students and reports 14,234 full-time hosted students in its introduction and provider table. The same report also gives 14,829 in January Core Data and 14,847 in its June discussion. Those figures appear to describe different reporting moments or sources; they should not be collapsed into one count without DESE’s explanation.
PRIVATE AND FAMILY-DIRECTED EDUCATION
The newest statewide private-school picture is federal
No exact statewide Missouri count exists. Missouri does not maintain a current private-school enrollment system comparable to its public Core Data system. The figures below are the newest federal survey estimates, covering 2023–24.
Read these as approximations, not administrative counts. NCES uses a weighted federal survey to estimate Missouri’s private-school universe. The survey is the best current statewide source available, but incomplete participation, coverage limitations and sampling uncertainty mean the actual totals may differ. These figures also cannot show how many private-school students live inside any particular public-school district.
732
estimated private schools in Missouri.
NCES PSS · 2023–24
108,917
estimated K–12 and ungraded private-school students.
NCES PSS · 2023–24
The published uncertainty is substantial: NCES reports standard errors—a measure of sampling uncertainty—of about 93 schools and 7,213 students for the Missouri estimates. The survey also excludes organizations that only support homeschooling without providing classroom instruction.
Home and Family Paced Education
Missouri law defines home schools and Family Paced Education and requires specified instruction and records. But Missouri does not maintain a public statewide enrollment count, APR-equivalent outcome file, teacher-workforce file or school-finance file for those arrangements. The responsible statement about measured district counts is therefore data not publicly available, not a number assembled from advocacy groups, vendors or partial registrations.
A FUNDING PROGRAM, NOT A SECTOR
Where MOScholars fits
MOScholars provides scholarship accounts through approved educational assistance organizations. A participant may use funds for private-school tuition or other eligible educational expenses. Participation is therefore a measure of program use, not a count of students in a single school sector.
6,411
unduplicated participants confirmed for the 2025–26 program year.
MISSOURI TREASURER REPORT · 2025–26
Nearly $44 million
awarded in the fourth reported program year.
MISSOURI TREASURER REPORT · 2025–26
The participant count is now confirmed. In an August 2026 response to this project, the Treasurer’s Office confirmed that 6,411 is the unduplicated 2025–26 participant total. The office said the “2,693 students participated” headline in Figure 5.1 was carried over from 2024–25 and will be corrected.
How this site treats the PRiME report: the demographic analysis was prepared by the PRiME Center at Saint Louis University for the Missouri State Treasurer’s Office. It is useful descriptive reporting on participants and program growth, but it is not an independent evaluation of program effects. It does not establish why families participated, what would have happened without the program, or whether MOScholars changed public-school enrollment or student outcomes. Review the PRiME report page →
Report citation: Kathryn Coleman, Michaela Parisi, Allison Chandler and Collin Hitt, MOScholars: Program Demographics and Participation Trends, SY 2022–23 to 2025–26, PRiME Center at Saint Louis University, prepared for the Missouri State Treasurer’s Office. Open the source →
Charter schools are public schools. They receive public funding, remain inside Missouri’s public assessment and accountability system, and are already included in statewide public-school totals. They should not be grouped with private schools or added to MOScholars participation as though they were the same kind of alternative.
MOScholars is a tax-credit scholarship program. It is not a charter-school program and not a separate school sector. Scholarship accounts may pay private-school tuition as well as other eligible educational expenses, so a participant count is not the same thing as private-school enrollment.
Who participated in 2025–26?
1,463 · 22.8%Participants with a verified Individualized Education Plan.
4,948 · 77.2%Participants without a verified IEP. That group includes income-eligible students and eligible siblings; it is not a direct count of low-income participants.
3,064 · 47.8%Participants in kindergarten through grade 2, calculated from the report’s appendix.
$80.93 millionCumulative scholarship awards reported across the program’s first four years.
The 2025–26 records list 4,340 White participants, 841 Black participants, 542 Hispanic or Latino participants, 504 participants of two or more races, 109 Asian participants and 75 in the report’s “Other” category. Gender was reported as 3,156 female and 3,255 male. These are statewide descriptions, not comparisons with Missouri’s eligible population and not district-level demographic data.
How the tax-credit pathway works
1 · ContributionA taxpayer makes a qualifying contribution to a Treasurer-certified educational assistance organization.
2 · Tax creditThe taxpayer may claim a state tax credit equal to 100% of the contribution, subject to the law’s taxpayer limits and the statewide program cap.
3 · OrganizationThe nonprofit educational assistance organization administers scholarship accounts and reports program activity.
4 · Student accountAn eligible family uses the account for approved expenses, which may include private-school tuition, tutoring, therapies, curriculum and other educational services.
This is not a conventional line-item appropriation to a private school. It does reduce state taxes otherwise owed, which is why it is commonly described as a state tax expenditure. Missouri law currently caps total annual MOScholars tax credits at $75 million, with later annual adjustments. Read the tax-credit statute →
What the new demographic report still cannot answer. It does not measure school quality, student outcomes, the number of participants who otherwise would have attended a public district, or the net fiscal effect on a particular district. Family-income reporting is also incomplete: the report says income is not collected for students who qualify through a verified IEP and that a secure DESE data match is still being pursued. The demographic findings therefore should not be used to claim that the program caused district enrollment loss or to compare participant income with public-school students.
One additional figure needs clarification. The report’s 2025–26 figure caption says 40% of participants were in grades K–2, but its appendix lists 1,306 kindergarteners, 1,230 first-graders and 528 second-graders. Those appendix counts total 3,064, or 47.8% of 6,411. The 40% figure matches K–1 more closely. This page uses the appendix arithmetic and keeps the discrepancy visible rather than silently choosing the headline. Open the PRiME report →
THE PROGRAM IN THREE VIEWS
Rapid growth, wider reach—and one unresolved reporting gap
Participation grew sharply
Unduplicated students reported in each program year
1,363
2022–23
1,994
2023–24
2,693
2024–25
6,411
2025–26
More of Missouri is represented
Home districts with at least one participant
2024–2575 of 516
15% of geographic districts
2025–26242 of 516
47% of geographic districts
This is where participants lived, not the school they attended.
Sources: Missouri Treasurer’s Office MOScholars demographic, home-district and program-data reports, 2025–26. Percentages are rounded.
WHERE REPORTED MONEY WENT
Six organizations administered awards; 287 schools received payments
The Treasurer approves nonprofit educational assistance organizations, or EAOs, to administer MOScholars accounts. The 2025–26 program-data report lists $43,062,773.00 in scholarships awarded across six EAOs and, in a separate table, $38,353,502.80 distributed to 287 named schools.
Scholarships awarded by EAO
The bar shows scholarships each organization administered in 2025–26. The smaller figure below it shows a carefully limited illustration of the potential administrative maximum; it is not an actual expense reported by the organization.
Organization names link to each EAO’s MOScholars website. This chart reflects the six EAOs in the 2025–26 payment report; the Treasurer’s current certified EAO directory → now also lists Activate Missouri.
Three related ledgers, not one accounting
$43.46 millionTotal awards in the demographic report
$43.06 millionScholarships awarded across six EAOs in the program-data report
$38.35 millionPayments listed for 287 schools in the program-data report
The reports do not explain the differences or provide one complete 2025–26 ledger covering tuition, tutoring, therapy, curriculum, transportation and every other eligible use. This page therefore shows each published measure separately.
Potential maximum for EAO administration, using the published award table as a proxy: Missouri law requires at least 90% of qualifying contributions to be spent on scholarship accounts and limits marketing and administration to 10% of the first $250,000, 8% of the next $500,000 and 3% thereafter. Applying that sliding formula separately to each EAO’s reported scholarship-award amount produces an illustrative combined maximum of $1,546,883.19—about 3.6% of the $43,062,773 EAO table. The EAO award table is used because the separate school-distribution table does not identify which EAO made each payment. This is not evidence that the organizations retained or spent that amount: the legal calculation uses qualifying contributions, while the public report provides scholarship awards and does not publish each EAO’s actual administrative costs. EAOs also remit 4% of qualifying contributions to the Treasurer for state program administration; that 4% is not money retained by the EAO. Read the EAO spending limits →Read the state’s 4% provision →
Search every school named in the 2025–26 payment table
The table starts with the largest reported distribution. A dollar amount shows money listed for that school, not the number of students, tuition charged, school revenue from all sources or a measure of school quality.
School named in state report
2025–26 distribution
Loading school payments…
Source note: names and amounts come from pages 28–34 of the Treasurer’s July 2026 program-data report. Minor spacing and one obvious city-name typo were cleaned; dollar values were not changed. Open the official report →
DISTRICT-LEVEL DETAIL
Which 242 home districts are represented?
The state report lists the public-school district assigned from each participant’s application address. Search the 242 districts with at least one reported participant in 2025–26. This is a student’s home district, not necessarily the school attended or a district that lost enrollment because of MOScholars.
Home public-school district
2024–25
2025–26
Loading district counts…
Privacy note: where the state report suppresses a count, this table displays “<5” rather than estimating it. Otherwise, the table reproduces the published value. Counts are actual program participation, not the separately published 2026–27 projections. Open the official MOScholars reports →
Where participants live: a new state report assigns application addresses to each student’s home public-school district. It reports at least one participant in 75 geographic districts in 2024–25 and 242 in 2025–26. That identifies where a participant lived, not the school the student attended.
Where reported payments went: the program-data report lists $43.06 million in scholarships awarded across six EAOs and $38.35 million distributed to 287 schools. The separate demographic report records $43.46 million in total awards. The reports do not reconcile the three totals or place every dollar into comparable categories such as tuition, tutoring, therapy, curriculum or transportation.
ONE BILL, SEVERAL DIRECTIONS
Senate Bill 727 changed more than teacher pay
This site has often cited SB 727 for its teacher-salary provisions. The same 2024 law also expanded MOScholars and authorized charter schools in Boone County. Reporting one part without the others would give readers an incomplete view.
Teacher salaries: the law raised the minimum fully certified teacher salary to $40,000 for 2025–26, set higher steps for teachers with a master’s degree and ten years of experience, and created the Teacher Baseline Salary Grant Program, subject to appropriation.
MOScholars: the law expanded the program statewide, raised the annual tax-credit cap from $50 million to $75 million with future adjustments, and widened household-income eligibility from 200% to 300% of the free/reduced-lunch standard.
Charter schools: the law added school districts in Boone County to the places where an authorized entity may operate a charter school. Authorization does not by itself mean a Boone County charter is currently operating.
Calendars and other provisions: the law also changed school-day requirements for specified districts, required voter approval for certain four-day-week adoptions beginning in 2026–27, and included foundation-formula, literacy and other education provisions.
Public schools produce the most comparable statewide academic, staffing and financial record. Other settings may maintain information for families, accreditors or program administrators, but Missouri does not publish an equivalent statewide dataset.
School-level differences hidden by district averages; causal claims from descriptive data.
Charters
Public assessment/APR, Core Data/MOSIS, sponsor accountability and public audits.
Local tax-base comparisons; geographic map shading; an agency-confirmed current statewide count. This page’s 36/78 figure is a dated reconstruction.
Full-time MOCAP
Public testing and accountability plus annual program reporting.
Resident-district fiscal and enrollment effects until assignment data are provided.
Private schools
Periodic NCES estimates and school-specific information; some voluntary accreditation and program reporting.
Comparable MAP/APR, spending, teacher pay, retention, debt, levy or graduation series.
Home/FPE
Legal instruction and record requirements, but no statewide public entity file.
Statewide enrollment, outcomes, staffing, finance or service comparisons.
MOScholars
Participant, award, home-district, school-distribution and selected demographic reporting; program and EAO oversight.
School effectiveness or an unduplicated enrollment sector. Current reports do not fully reconcile total awards with school distributions and other service categories.
The public-school case rests partly on visibility. Missouri public schools must report academic performance, staffing and public finances and submit to state accountability and audit systems. That transparency does not make every public school effective, but it makes shortcomings visible and improvement a public responsibility. This project’s goal is not to rank every educational option as if the evidence were equal; it is to use the strongest available evidence to make Missouri public schools better.
This page can: explain legal and reporting differences, show dated scale estimates, distinguish public charters and MOCAP from private education, report program participation and identify missing comparisons.
This page cannot: name a “best” sector, build an additive enrollment pie, compare public and private test scores as equals, or infer performance from data Missouri does not collect.
SOURCES AND PERSPECTIVES
Official records first, outside voices labeled
The figures above come from public records. The two final links represent opposing Missouri policy perspectives; they are included so readers can examine the argument, not because this site endorses either organization.
Supportive perspective: the Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri argues that charter, virtual and scholarship-account options give families more control over finding a setting that meets a child’s needs.
Critical perspective: the Missouri National Education Association opposed SB 727’s charter and MOScholars expansion while acknowledging that the bill contained positive public-school provisions.
A link is not an endorsement. These two perspectives are intentionally selective and Missouri-grounded. Claims about counts, law and public reporting on this page continue to rely on the official sources above.