MISSOURI PARENTS GET BIGGER PICTURE

Making good on a campaign promise, Gov. Bob Holden signed into law Thursday a measure expanding the annual performance reports school districts release to the public.

Effective Aug. 28, school districts must report their annual academic performance by individual schools. The legislation expands current law requiring disclosure of the information only for the whole district.

"Right now, it is difficult for Missouri parents to get a full and accurate picture of the quality of their child's school as compared with others in the school district and the rest of Missouri," Holden said at a bill signing ceremony in St. Louis. "By keeping the parents fully informed about their child's progress, they will have a better idea of how they can become involved in their child's learning process."

Holden had campaigned on the issue when running for governor last year. He argued that individual school report cards were necessary because school performance can vary greatly within districts.

Under the new law, schools must report student-teacher ratios, student scores on standardized tests and teachers' average years of experience and advanced education, among other information.

Schools must also annually report the number of students expelled, the number of students suspended for more than 10 days, and the reasons for those disciplinary actions.

The state education department will be required to develop a standardize form for the reports, which school districts may use or adapt. Previously, districts designed their own reports, so there was little consistency among the state's 524 school districts.

Districts could issue the reports with student grade cards, when students enroll, through newspapers or on the Internet.

Cape Girardeau schools superintendent Dan Steska said the new requirements won't mean much additional work in his district because they already track much of the reported information for each of the district's nine schools.

"We keep a ton of data here, it's just that we haven't reported that in our annual report in the past," Steska said. "It's another governmental regulation that we will need to attend to make sure that it's in our reporting process."

Brent Ghan of the Missouri School Boards Association said his group didn't make the bill one of its priorities during the legislative session that ended May 18.

"We felt like there were quite a few schools districts that were doing that anyway, so it probably won't be a big change for a lot of districts," Ghan said in a telephone interview. "That said, we think it's a positive step for districts in their efforts to communicate with the public."

The district level reporting was required by the 1993 Outstanding Schools Act. Missouri National Education Association President Donna Collins said her teachers' union supported the reporting then and still does.

Staff writer Tamara Zellars Buck contributed to this report.