Here’s how other unaccredited or provisionally accredited districts in Missouri performed on the 2015 Missouri Assessment Program:
Provisionally accredited
St. Louis City: 32.8 (English), 21.8 (Math)
Jennings: 40, 27
Kansas City: 32.4, 22
Unaccredited
Normandy: 23.8, 12.4
Riverview Gardens: 22.7, 12.6
Student test scores from DeKalb Schools Superintendent Steve Green’s last year running Kansas City Public Schools were released Monday, but it remains unclear how students in the district improved — or declined — compared to previous years.
A different test makes the comparison murky, but Green and his successor both said they think students did better in English and slid back in math on the 2015 Missouri Assessment Program.
Green’s track record in improving student achievement was the reason DeKalb’s school board chose him to succeed Michael Thurmond. Student achievement is next on the to-do list in turning around the DeKalb school district.
More rigorous standards through Common Core changed the grading scale in Missouri, said Sarah Potter, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“Monday’s (scores) are just raw files,” she said. “In the past, (Kansas City) made their improvement by showing progress, then student growth. Progress means third-grade students did better than last year. For student growth, it means that (fictional student) Sally did better this year than last year.”
Green said Tuesday, “We didn’t know what we were going to see based on the assessment. The test was given totally online,” so students had to deal with “drag and drop, cut and paste, using special tools … in addition to meeting new levels. Factor that in and, in terms of looking at proficiency, looking at English, it went up, and went back in math.”
The scores released were from the 2015 Missouri Assessment Program, grading students based on new Common Core standards the state adopted. The new test was given last spring, with students taking math and English assessments online.
On average, 59.7 percent of Missouri students passed the English portion of the test, while 45 percent passed the math component. Students are tested on four components, but standards for social studies and science did not change from previous years.
In the Kansas City district, where Green was superintendent before beginning with DeKalb in July, 32.4 percent of students passed the English portion of the test, while 22 percent of students passed math.
“Those are predicated on students meeting levels,” he said. “I think when you’re climbing up from where we were, it’s a long climb, but it’s a level of growth. It takes two to three years to get to proficiency. Overall, there’s a strong case to argue for consistent improvement overall.”
The district lost its accreditation in September 2011, but was approved for provisional status, after several years of academic progress, in August 2014.
Al Tunis, interim superintendent for Kansas City Public Schools, said that since the numbers alone don’t provide context for the scores, the district sought to create its own system for comparison, which showed it improving in English and falling in math.
“Overall, we’re optimistic,” he said. “We know we’re behind in the state average, but we’re closing the gap.”
In October, information on a number of other measures, including attendance, graduation rate and a college/career-ready rate, will help provide more context to the district MAP scores.
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