The Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri supports public policies that encourage access to high quality educational options for all Missouri students, including those who do not succeed in a traditional academic setting.
Our primary objectives are to educate business and civic leaders, legislators and parents about the importance of improving quality educational opportunities for every Missouri child and, when possible, to open pathways for that change. Our goal is to change statewide policy that will lead to increased academic achievement, especially for children who do not excel in a typical classroom setting.
To that end, CEAM supports strong, traditional public school system and support reforms that are designed to strengthen public schools. Reforms such as performance pay for teachers, restructuring the outdated tenure system and ending the practice of social promotion can rebuild struggling district public schools and bolster quality ones. We also believe in options such as charter public schools, open enrollment and scholarship tax credit programs.
Missouri currently is falling behind much of the nation in many of these key areas of reform. Our state often is ranked in the middle of the pack on various assessments of how all states are performing in education. Add to that the fact that the United States ranks in the middle of all industrialized countries worldwide and it is clear that Missouri schools presently are not producing students ready to compete in the global marketplace.