Each year, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education publishes an online "school accountability report card" for each public school district, each building and each charter school. This document provides a statewide report card on key accountability measures about Missouri public schools, including information required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of the annual reports is to give parents, educators, policy makers, and the public a consistent, easy-to-use summary of vital statistics about Missouri's public education system, pre-kindergarten to grade 12. The data in this report is from the 2009-10 school year (concluding June 30, 2010). Highlights for 2009-2010 include: (1) More Missouri students excelled in the 2009-10 Missouri Assessment Program; (2) The percentage of Missouri fourth- and eighth-grade students scoring proficient or advanced in the reading assessment of the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was 35 percent, an increase of three percentage points over 2007 levels; (3) Reflecting an impact of the Great Recession, the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch rose more than three percentage points, from 43.7 in 2008-09 to 46.9 in 2009-10. Five years ago, the rate was 40.8 percent of students; (4) The number of K-12 teachers decreased from 70,614 in 2008-09 to 70,185 in 2009-10. During the same period, teachers with regular certificates increased from 96.5% to 98.6%; and (5) The overall dropout rate declined favorably from the previous year, from 3.9 to 3.5 percent. However, dropout rates increased among black students from 7.5 to 8.5 percent.