Test scores for Missouri students who participated in MOScholars, a state program that has funded thousands of private school scholarships, are public for the first time. And despite some key limitations with the data, one researcher said the initial results are promising.

MOScholars uses state tax dollars and private donations incentivized with tax credits to provide scholarships for K-12 students that can be used for private school and other educational expenses.

In an Oct. 28 report published on the Missouri state treasurer’s website, researchers from the PRiME Center at St. Louis University found that students scored slightly below the national average in math and slightly above in English by the program’s third year. 

That’s a hopeful sign given MOScholars’ focus on students with disabilities and lower-income families, said Collin Hitt, executive director of the PRiME Center and co-author of the report. 

Hitt said that in a dataset where 40% of students have individualized education programs and many have to meet income guidelines, “I would not have guessed that we would have seen test scores this high.”

But the report, covering the 2022-23 to 2024-25 school years, comes with caveats. The authors note the data is best seen as a baseline rather than evidence of cause and effect because of the limited timeframe of the study. 

During that timeframe, participation in MOScholars rose from less than 1,400 students in year one to nearly 2,700 in year three. 

But only students in third through 10th grades are required to test, and so far, the program skews toward the young. Of those who should have tested, 22% didn’t submit a valid score. 

That means researchers were working with less than 2,200 valid test scores for all three years combined. 

As MOScholars grows, students grow and reporting improves, researchers anticipate being able to draw more conclusions. The program included more than 6,400 students last school year, nearly 3,000 of whom were in the grades required to test. 

“This is all about to change,” Hitt said. 

The test results

Researchers received scores from 19 valid tests including the Iowa Assessments, NWEA and versions of the ACT. They combined results into a single average by converting them into a percentile score that compares the students’ performance to that of their peers nationwide.

Over the three years of the program, average math scores rose from the 47th to 49th percentile, while average English language arts scores rose from the 46th to 51st percentile. 

The scores can’t easily be compared to public schools’ scores because Missouri’s state evaluations don’t equate to a national percentile. Missouri’s 2023-24 scores from the Nation’s Report Card are the closest comparison. They range around the 45th to 47th percentile. 

Researchers also studied whether individual MOScholars students were improving, but even fewer students had valid scores for at least two years in a row. 

“It’s just not a large enough sample size to be able to say much with confidence about growth or student movement over time,” Hitt said. “Insofar as we can say anything, students in the program appear to be growing at the same pace as their peers nationally.”

Also on Oct. 28, a separate PRiME Center report found that 99% of parents who responded to a survey are satisfied with MOScholars. 

How MOScholars works 

Created by the state legislature in 2021, MOScholars first awarded scholarships for the 2022-23 school year. The scholarships are funded by donors, who receive tax credits. 

The legislature has also devoted a portion of Missouri’s general tax revenue to the program, inspiring a lawsuit. Opponents say the program diverts funding from public schools, which the state has underfunded, to those that aren’t held to the same standards as public schools and may reject students based on religion, academic performance, disability or sexuality. 

Many participating students are from the Kansas City area, though the program is growing more quickly elsewhere. During the 2025-26 school year, the districts with the most MOScholars students were St. Joseph, Kansas City Public Schools and North Kansas City. 

Annual scholarship awards are capped at the state adequacy target, the amount considered necessary to educate a student in Missouri, which has recently been around $7,000. Funds can be used for school tuition, supplies, fees and services at Missouri private, traditional public, charter, virtual or certain home schools. 

Students can participate if they have an individualized education program for students with disabilities or a qualifying household income. 

Students with IEPs made up about 30% of participants during the timeframe of the report, about twice the statewide or nationwide rates. They were 40% or more of those who submitted valid test scores each year. In general, students with IEPs scored lower than those without. 

A student is also eligible if their family makes less than 300% of the cap for receiving free or reduced-price lunches and they meet one of the following criteria: 

• Attended public school full-time for at least a semester during the past year. 
• Beginning kindergarten or first grade. 
• Has a sibling who received a scholarship last year and will again for the upcoming year. 

According to the state treasurer’s office, the current cap is above $180,000 for a family of four. 

Initial caps were lower, but researchers were not able to include family income in the study because of incomplete and inconsistent reporting.