The majority of school districts and charter schools in the St. Louis area remain in accredited ranges, according to new state data.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released its latest Annual Performance Report, which includes data from the 2024-2025 school year, on Thursday. It’s the second year in a row that schools across the state have shown an upward trend in academic performance and growth since a dramatic drop in scores during the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 92% of Missouri’s public school students attend schools that either meet or exceed state expectations, according to DESE.
“I am so very proud of our educators and our students, and I think that you must take a little bit of time to celebrate the good, but we also know there's room for improvement, and we remain diligent in working with our school systems so that what we are doing to improve education in the state,” Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said during a press conference on Thursday in Jefferson City.
Attendance, graduation and Missouri Assessment Program scores have also improved.
Collin Hitt, executive director of the PRiME Center at St. Louis University, said one of the bright spots in the data was Missouri’s progress in combating chronic absenteeism.
Chronic absenteeism is when a student misses more than 10% of the school year, which in most states amounts to about 18 days of instruction. Evidence shows that students who attend school regularly are more likely to perform better academically.
“We have seen chronic absenteeism on the rise and average daily attendance on the decline since the pandemic,” Hitt said. “Today's numbers suggest a reversal of that statewide.”
Districts with 20% or more of students who are chronically absent fell from 172 to 54.
“So post pandemic, schools have rightfully fretted about the trends in attendance and absenteeism, and we’re seeing that move in a positive direction,” Hitt said.
The APR is based on statewide education standards set by the Missouri School Improvement Plan, which was updated to its sixth version in 2022.
It takes into account student test scores, whether students are showing measurable growth from the beginning to the end of the school year, superintendent certification, district finances and other factors. DESE awards points for each category, which then inform a district’s overall APR score.
The Missouri State Board of Education ultimately uses the APR to help determine accreditation classification for school districts or charter renewals.
School districts will not see their accreditation status change during the remainder of this school year.
DESE will use two consecutive composite APR scores, which span four school years of data, to make its accreditation recommendations to the state school board.
The agency says it needs one more year of data from the 2025-2026 school year, as data from 2022, the first year the MSIP 6 went into effect, cannot be used to lower district classifications.
The state board is expected to vote on any changes to district accreditation in January 2027.
School superintendents react
Most St. Louis-area school systems increased or maintained their APR from last year.
However, some St. Louis-area superintendents expressed caution over how the APR scores should be interpreted by the general public and families.
The Kirkwood School District, a historically high-performing district, saw its score drop from 90 to 78 this year.
In an email sent to families earlier this week, Superintendent Kenneth Roumpos attributed the drop in the overall score to a testing error.
Eighth-grade students who took Algebra 1 last year, a course considered advanced for that grade level, did not take the corresponding end-of-year assessment. The students took the regular 8th-grade math assessment instead.
Roumpos said the district's appeal on the matter was declined. The state department requires Algebra 1 testing for students who take the course and weighs it into a district’s overall math score, which Kirkwood didn’t receive points for, hurting its final score.
The incident highlights a fallacy in equating one number to the overall performance of students across an entire district, according to Roumpos.
He pointed to the district’s strides in English language art and over Missouri Assessment Program scores.
“When this is meant to be a reflection on the performance and continuous improvement of the district and the instruction taking place, we find that the score isn't reflective of the achievement or of the teaching and learning taking place in the district,” Roumpos said in an interview on Wednesday.
He said the district has implemented new measures to prevent such an error from happening again, and nearly 250 students who were affected by the oversight are scheduled to take the exam on Friday.
Ritenour School District Superintendent Chris Killbride also encouraged families to take the APR scores with a grain of salt.
“Trying to distill the complex work that we do of educating every student every day and running an educational organization … to one number is very difficult to do,” said Chris Killbride, superintendent of the Ritenour School District.
The district received an overall score of 67%, down from 71% last year. Killbride attributes fluctuations in student attendance as part of the explanation for the decline.
Consistent attendance remains a challenge for school districts across the nation.
One bright spot in the district’s progress is its graduation rate, which has grown to 82.6% as of last school year, according to Killbride.
Ritenour is one of 20 that participate in the State School Innovation Waiver plan. That’s a program that allows school districts to develop their own methods for assessing students’ academic performance in addition to the state-mandated performance report.
The districts and charters are part of a statewide initiative called the Success-Ready Student Network, which is a collection of school districts that are redesigning education assessments and accreditation processes in Missouri.
Killbride encouraged interested families to take a closer look at student achievement by checking out the district’s data dashboard.
University City School District Superintendent Sharonica Hardin-Bartley echoed Killbride’s sentiment about the APR scores despite the district’s progress.
The district scored 81%, up from 75% last year.
“I do want to say that we are making steady progress, and we still have a tremendous amount of work to do around students being able to achieve at the level and at the potential that we know they're capable of,” Hardin-Bartley said. “I always liken the APR as more of a snapshot.”
She believes students are still navigating challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, including struggling with attendance. The district did not receive any points for the category.
“Are we out of the woods from the pandemic? I would say absolutely not,” Hardin-Bartley said.
She said the district is working diligently to ensure schools are welcoming to all students in hopes of boosting attendance and participation — both of which are key to student learning and success.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Sharonica Hardin-Bartley's first name.
This story has been updated to include comments from Missouri Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger during a press conference held Thursday and Collin Hitt, executive director of the PRiME Center at St. Louis University.
