The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is the administrative arm of the
Missouri State Board of Education
Missouri State Board of Education (MSBE) is Missouri's board of education, headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, Jefferson City.public education system. Through its statewide school-improvement initiatives and its regulatory functions, the department strives to ensure all citizens have access to high-quality public education. In addition to the commissioner of education, the department organization reflects functions under two divisions; Financial and Administrative Services and Learning Services.
The department is headquartered in the Jefferson State Office Building in downtown
Jefferson City, Missouri
Jefferson City, informally Jeff City, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital of the U.S. state of Missouri. It had a population of 43,228 at the 2020 United States census, ranking as the List of cities in Missouri, 16th most popu ...
. It was reorganized and established in its present form by the Omnibus State Reorganization Act of 1974.
Organization
*Commissioner
**Chief Counsel
**Communications
**Governmental Relations
*Deputy Commissioner
**Division of Learning Services
***Office of Adult Learning and Rehabilitation Services
***Office of Childhood
***Office of College and Career Readiness
***Office of Data System Management
***Office of Educator Quality
***Office of Quality Schools
***Office of Special Education
**Division of Financial and Administrative Services
***Accounting & Procurement
***Budget
***Financial and Administrative Services
***Food and Nutrition Services
***Human Resource
''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' database report
On October 14, 2021, the ''
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the '' Belleville News-Democra ...
'' reported that a flaw on a DESE website allowed the exposure of the Social Security numbers of over 100,000 DESE administrators, counselors, and teachers. The ''Post-Dispatch'' notified DESE of the security flaw and delayed the publication of its story "to give the department time to take steps to protect teachers’ private information, and to allow the state to ensure no other agencies’ web applications contained similar vulnerabilities".
In response, governor
Mike Parson
Michael Lynn Parson (born September 17, 1955) is an American politician and former law enforcement officer who served as the 57th List of governors of Missouri, governor of Missouri, from 2018 to 2025. A member of the Republican Party (United S ...
announced that the
Missouri State Highway Patrol
The Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) is the highway patrol agency for Missouri and has jurisdiction all across the state. It is a division of the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Colonel Michael A. Turner has been serving as the 25th ...
digital forensic unit would investigate "all of those involved", vowed to seek criminal prosecution of the "hacker" journalist who reported the story, and said his "administration is standing up against any and all perpetrators who attempt to steal personal information and harm Missourians". Parson claimed the reporter wanted to "embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet", calling the reporting a "crime against Missouri teachers" and pledging to "hold accountable all those who aided this individual and the media corporation that employs them".
Parson's response was widely condemned by tech experts, who asserted that checking a web page's
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer.
Since a computer, at base, only ...
does not qualify as hacking and that prosecution would result in
chilling effects
Lumen, formerly Chilling Effects, is an American collaborative archive created by Wendy Seltzer and operated by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. It allows recipients of cease-and-desist notices to submit ...
that would prevent future security vulnerabilities from being reported. Parson was also criticized by a variety of local and national politicians, including Republican lawmaker
Tony Lovasco
Tony Lovasco is a Republican Party (United States), Republican politician who served as a member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 2019 to 2025. He represented the 64th district, which as of 2022 encompasses a portion of northwest St. ...
and Democratic Senator
Ron Wyden
Ronald Lee Wyden ( ; born May 3, 1949) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from Oregon, a seat he has held since 1996 United States Senate special el ...