Missouri gets C on annual Quality Counts education report card

Based on its grade from a national report on education, Missouri wouldn't quite make the cut in Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average."

The Show Me State earned a C on the annual "Quality Counts" report card released Tuesday. Missouri moved up slightly in its overall grade, from a C- last year.

Quality Counts is Education Week's yearly update on state-level efforts to improve public education.

Despite the midrange finish, Chris Nicastro, commissioner of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, sounded confident about future report cards.

"Our state has the potential to be within the top 10 by 2020, if not before, on Quality Counts and other comparative national reports," Nicastro said in a news release. "Education leaders and other stakeholders statewide are working to ensure that a top-tier public education system is available for our students, parents and communities."

But the state has plenty of room for improvement, according to the report card.

Missouri earned scored a D+ in the category of K-12 achievement, an index that evaluates the strength of educational performance against 18 indicators that capture current achievement, improvements over time and poverty-based disparities or gaps. Missouri's best grade was a B- in the category of standards, assessments and accountability.

The Missouri Assessment Program, end-of-course examinations and other testing measures have strengthened the state's educational standards and assessments, educators say. But Missouri's comparatively more rigorous standards could hurt its overall achievement grade on such report cards, one Southeast Missouri administrator said.

"Our tests and our standards are very high, and you can ask any teacher in the state trying to accomplish those benchmarks each year," said Rita Fisher, assistant superintendent of the Jackson School District. "They can be doing great things in the classroom, have students working up to their potential, and still have some students who are not going to make the target. And that's why I think the achievement is so low."

The achievement targets will only climb under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, mandating that all students are 100 percent proficient in math and communication arts by 2014.

Russell Leek, assistant superintendent of the Perryville School District, repeated a common complaint: that such standards-based testing is diminishing critical thinking by teaching to the test.

"I teach a Sunday school class and when the school year started I asked a seventh-grade boy in my class how school was going. He said he hated it, that all they were doing was working on MAP preparation," Leek said. "Three days into school and they were already working on the MAP test. The education we're giving isn't the best because of those tests."

The report finds the nation has made little progress improving the opportunities for students to succeed throughout their lives. Quality Counts gives the U.S. a C+ on the annual Chance-for-Success index, the same grade as last year. Missouri also earned a C+.

Education Week's report notes the challenging economic environment, and states' struggles to fund and deliver high-quality education, but it asserts the way out of the economic malaise is through investment in education.

"If we are going to continue advancing as a nation, then strong, sustained and equitable educational improvement must become the norm for students in every state rather than the exception that it is today," said Christopher B. Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the not-for-profit that publishes Education Week.

Missouri earned a C- on the report card's school finance analysis category. Financial constraints are likely to be more severe for public education as the Missouri Legislature wrestles with a budget shortfall pegged as high as $700 million. Sen. Victor Callahan, D-Independence, on Tuesday said the state could reduce the amount due to schools by about $80 million by making several changes to the funding formula.

Grading his own, Leek said he would give Perryville's public schools a C+ or a B, noting the district is striving for excellence, not perfection.

Fisher grades Jackson's public schools an A-, pointing to the district's graduation rate and other academic indicators as evidence of exceptional achievement.

"I think there is always room for improvement," she said, "but I think we do things very well here."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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