Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education building (Photo courtesy of Alisa Nelson)
Missouri has released its 2021-2022 Annual Performance Report (APR), which lays out overall K-12 public school performance. The report card shows more than 100 school districts around the state could be at risk of losing accreditation if improvements are not made over the next few years.
New metrics being used this time fall under the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP), a K-12 accountability system. State Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven said the latest version, MSIP 6, is more rigorous than the previous one, known as MSIP 5.
According to the report, four of Missouri’s districts earned the accredited with distinction category in the 2022 school year. The top performing districts are Green Forest R-II, Marceline R-V, Mark Twain R-VIII, and Thornfield R-I.
In the accredited category, 435 reached this level in 2022. As for provisionally accredited, 112 fell within this range, which would put them at risk of losing accreditation. In the 2017-18 school year, only six were deemed as provisionally accredited.
None of Missouri’s charter schools reached the accredited with distinction level. Lafayette Preparatory Academy in St. Louis was the highest performing charter school, followed by Academie Lafeyette in Kansas City, and Gateway Science Academy of St. Louis.
Twenty charter schools would be considered accredited, while 13 fall within the provisionally unaccredited zone.
Two charter schools scored within the unaccredited category. DeLaSalle and Hogan Preparatory Academy in Kansas City scored below 50%.
“These data tell us that students in 2021 and 2022 were still not performing to the levels prior to the pandemic. Teachers and students alike report experiencing unparalleled stress, fatigue, and mental health issues,” State Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven said during a virtual call with reporters. “What you will see in our data is that many of our systems are stressed and it will take us all working together to meet our vision of improving lives through education.”
The APR shows the subject scores in English and math, attendance, readiness for kindergarten, high school, and the graduation rate, among other things.
“One of the things that just gives me great concern when we’re talking about some of the mental health needs of our children that we’re seeing in our classrooms right now, is in some cases, teachers are telling us that students have become somewhat apathetic. Post pandemic in particular, sometimes a C is acceptable. We can’t have that,” said the commissioner. “We’ve got to keep kids moving forward and one of the ways we do that is by putting that career plan in front of them, talking about the future.”
Vandeven said scores fell for students who have historically performed lower than the state average. The category, labeled as “Student Group”, is made up of low-income, Black, Hispanic, English language learning students and students with disabilities.
“We are seeing, after more than a decade of working really hard on closing those gaps, seeing an increase in those gaps. (We) really need to pay attention to that as a state and as a nation,” Vandeven said.
The commissioner said attendance rates have been a problem at some schools since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Chronic absenteeism, which is captured in the Success Ready Student metric, is a lingering concern and appears to be more prevalent in areas where on-site school options were not available for extended periods,” said Vandeven.
What about the bright spots of the report?
“I think there are some bright stories, particularly to tell in our college and career readiness indicators. There was a time when schools would say that students didn’t have access to an advanced course, for example. And you’ll see that that has expanded broadly,” said Vandeven.
MSIP 6 holds schools equally accountable for progress and standardized test scores. They are split into “Status” and “Growth” categories. “Status” is considered student achievement at a specific time, while “Growth” is considered how students continually improve.
When interpreting the scores, take Academie Lafayette, for example. The report for the Kansas City charter school shows all students there earned 12 out of 12 points in the “Status” category for English. The student sub group earned 6 out of 6 points.
In the “Growth category”, all Academie Lafayette students earned 11.6 out of 12 points in English. The student sub group section earned 5.7 out of 6 points.
Due to the new scale, the commissioner said the latest results should not be compared to data from previous years.
Doug Hayter, the executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators also cautions the public about comparing the new data to results from previous years.
“I think people are going to make comparisons – it’s natural to where we were in 2018 and 2019. My question would be, if there is a shift in the numbers, are the metrics true and realistic? Were the former metrics true and realistic,” asked Hayter. “Do we have that many districts that are in that A plus range? The question that I would have now, do we really believe there’s only four districts? Have we gone so far the other direction now? I think that’s a question that will flesh itself out over the next couple of years as we look at this new method. We know we had a slight decline during the pandemic, but did we really move that much in these few years? I have real serious questions if the metric truly reflects where we are in comparison to those two.”
Since the 2021-2022 academic year includes baseline data and is considered a “reset” under MSIP 6, state statute does not allow the report’s outcomes to be used to make accreditation decisions or to evaluate teachers. For this year, the accreditation level for each district is instead based on superintendent certification; reserve fund balance, local board member orientation and training; and compliance with state and federal law.
Vandeven said a new state statute requires Missouri to rank districts based upon their APR scores. The rankings will be on their report card.
Copyright © 2023 · Missourinet
