State Board of Education president Charlie Shields opens a state board meeting in December of 2023 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s system for rating schools came under fire Tuesday morning as the State Board of Education looked at the accreditation status of districts.
Questions about the department’s system arose as Kerry Casey, a board member from Chesterfield, pushed for St. Louis Public Schools to be demoted from fully accredited to provisional accreditation.
“I’m very concerned as I read the paper daily here in St. Louis about the failures of the St. Louis public school district,” she told board members. “There is hardly a day that goes by that we’re not reminded of it.”
St. Louis Public Schools, as reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is facing an administrative turnover after its previous superintendent was ousted while under investigation for hiring and spending practices.
Education department officials opposed the use of news articles to assess accreditation, saying other districts may have similar problems without coverage in local press.
Accreditation recommendations presented Tuesday were based largely on superintendent certification, department leaders told the board, but other factors like reserve fund balances were part of the checklist.
Student performance data, which is reported annually as part of the Missouri School Improvement Program, is not being considered in the infancy of a new scoring system.
Based on the limited factors, the department suggested dropping the Osborn R-0 School District to provisionally accredited and raising the status of Success R-IV and Gilman City R-IV school districts from provisionally accredited to accredited.
The rest of the state’s districts will remain static, as approved by the board. That includes St. Louis, which remains fully accredited.
Accreditation status is not scheduled to be lowered based on student performance until the board reviews scores in January 2027. Statute allows scores to be lowered a year earlier.
“Waiting two more years when kids are failing and schools are failing to improve literacy rates, et cetera, almost borders on negligent,” Casey said.
She asked that the board review the policy and allow districts’ status to be lowered based on performance next year, with checks to rule out anomalies in the data. This did not come for a vote Tuesday.
Casey noted St. Louis Public Schools did not meet school improvement objectives of the Missouri School Improvement Program, like a requirement to implement an improvement plan. But this was not part of the accreditation checklist reviewed this year.
The department said staff have been working with the district and looking at areas such as “financial condition, compliance in certain areas, dealing with governance and leadership at the district level.”
Board President Charlie Shields, from St. Joseph, said he and Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger have chatted about improving the department’s accreditation system.
“You will see us continue to evolve and try to make improvements on this in not only how we do it but also the remedies available to us,” he said. “Because the remedies, particularly with unaccredited districts, the remedies available in the past have not been particularly helpful in getting schools back to where they need to be.”
St. Louis-area districts Riverview Gardens and Normandy Schools Collaborative both had a special administrative board overseen by the state for around a decade after dipping into unaccredited status.
Community members regained local control of the districts’ school boards in October of 2023.
Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, a board member from Pasadena Hills, asked for an update on the department’s collaboration with Riverview Gardens, Normandy Schools Collaborative and St. Louis Public Schools at an upcoming meeting.
Casey’s push for demoting St. Louis Public Schools did not receive a second supporter to spur a vote.
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