What districts have — and where it comes from
This page follows the money available for students: what districts spend, how that spending has changed, how much comes from local taxpayers, and why the same tax rate can produce radically different resources from one community to the next. Start by comparing the same 13 school years in any two districts.
What this page shows
- The median Missouri district spends $13,255 per student, but spending alone is not a district report card. Student needs, labor markets, transportation and fixed costs differ sharply.
- The share of revenue raised locally runs from 13% to 97%. Districts with more property to tax can fund much more of their schools themselves; property-poor districts depend more heavily on state and federal support.
- The same 10¢ tax raises about $39 per student in Missouri’s property-poorest K–12 district and about $716 in its wealthiest — an 18-fold gap in tax capacity, not effort.
What did 13 years of school cost for a May 2025 high school graduate?
Choose two districts to estimate what each reported spending per pupil from kindergarten in 2012–13 through high-school graduation in May 2025. Because both students follow the same years, the comparison makes long-term differences in reported school resources visible.
What districts spend per student
What each district spends per student. Spending and results line up less tightly than people expect — local wealth and the cost of living shape these numbers as much as any choice a district makes.
Spending varies less than tax capacity
Community type changes the context around this map. The median city district spends about $3,000 more per pupil than the median town, while the property wealth available to tax differs much more sharply.
| Community | Spending per pupil | Property wealth per student |
|---|---|---|
| Rural 388 districts | $13,395 | $125,929 |
| Town 69 districts | $12,297 | $116,867 |
| Suburb 45 districts | $14,025 | $168,011 |
| City 14 districts | $15,296 | $212,080 |
District medians. DESE finance and State Auditor tax-year-2025 property values; NCES locale categories. Three virtual-school hosts lack a usable per-student property-wealth value.
Explore all four community types →A shared-program caution: estimates may be less comparable for districts that host multi-district special-education cooperatives or regional career/technical centers. Some program expenses may be recorded by the host while some students served are associated with other districts in the published enrollment records. The site keeps DESE’s published value and adds documented district context rather than guessing an adjustment. The full definition is in Methods.
That is not evidence that money does not matter. Districts face different student needs, labor markets, transportation burdens and fixed costs, and this file does not say what an additional dollar purchased. The comparison shows that spending level alone is not a district report card; it cannot estimate what outcomes would have been with more or less funding.
St. Louis County requires a separate caution. Special School District records its own special-education spending while students remain enrolled in 22 component districts. A component district’s published figure therefore does not represent every public dollar spent on services for its students.
How per-pupil spending has moved
Pick a starting year and the map shows how each district’s spending per student has changed since then — where budgets grew, and where they got squeezed.
What communities tax themselves, per student
This map shows the property-tax dollars each community raises per student. It varies enormously — and being short on income is not the same as being short on property to tax.
How hard you tax is only half the story. Sixty-four districts charge the exact same rate — $2.75, to the penny — yet a dime of that rate raises $57 per student in Thayer R-II and $702 in Pettis Co. R-XII. Same tax, twelve times the money. A community can tax itself hard and still come up short, simply because there is little property to tax.
Where each district’s money actually comes from
Every Missouri district is funded from three pockets: local property taxes, state aid, and federal dollars. But the mix is nothing like uniform. This map shows the share raised locally. Blue districts fund themselves; red districts depend on the state and federal government for most of what they spend.
And this tracks wealth almost perfectly. Sort districts by property wealth per student and the local share climbs step by step: the poorest quarter of districts raises 40% locally, the wealthiest quarter raises 63%. More property to tax and a bigger local share go hand in hand, almost without exception.
This is worth pausing on, because it cuts against a common assumption. A district that depends heavily on state aid is not necessarily a district that isn’t trying — it is usually a district that cannot raise much locally no matter how hard it tries. The next map shows exactly why.
What would a levy cost you — and what could it raise?
Enter a home value and a proposed levy increase, then compare two districts. The homeowner cost is the same wherever the home has the same market value. What the levy can raise for students is not.
What a single dime actually buys
The rate stays the same. The tax base does not.
A dime costs 10¢ for every $100 of assessed value everywhere in Missouri. What changes is how much assessed property exists for each student the district serves.
A “dime” is a tiny tax — 10¢ for every $100 of assessed value — and it is the same rate everywhere in Missouri. But what that identical dime raises per student is wildly different from place to place. This map shades each district by what one dime brings in; red means below the statewide middle of about $131.
The true statewide extreme is wider still. Shell Knob 78 — a K-8 district on Table Rock Lake with 114 students and a shoreline full of high-value property — raises $961 per student from the same dime. That is 24 times what Naylor raises. We lead with Clayton because it is a like-for-like K-12 comparison; Shell Knob is the honest outer edge.
Two reasonable ways to read the same fact
The dime test establishes tax capacity, not funding adequacy. It proves that an identical rate raises unequal amounts. By itself, it cannot tell us whether state aid closes enough of the gap, how much local variation is appropriate, or what any district ought to spend. Those are policy judgments that require the local, state and federal revenue picture shown elsewhere on this page.
Any per-student figure for those three — assessed value per student, spending per student, local revenue share, even the achievement score — divides a small local quantity by a large statewide one, and the result is an artifact, not a fact about that community. We exclude them from the dime test rather than publish a number we know to be meaningless.
From funding capacity to the tax bill
The dime test explains what a tax rate can raise. The companion page explains what homeowners pay, how operating and debt-service levies differ, how often voters approve increases, and what district debt and reserves can — and cannot — tell us.