CHAFFEE EARNS MSIP ACCREDITATION

CHAFFEE -- The Chaffee Board of Education learned Thursday night that the district has received accreditation after a recent state evaluation.

The school district recently received the results of an evaluation performed in February by members of the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) review team.

Chaffee schools received an accredited rating, the second-highest rating status from the Missouri department of education.

The MSIP team evaluated the district's resource, process and performance standards during their visit.

Missouri schools are evaluated on a five-year rotation, after which the reviewing team submits a report based on its findings to the State Board of Education. The district is then classified based on its performance.

Four state accreditation classifications are available: unaccredited, provisionally accredited, accredited and accredited with distinction in performance.

Chaffee schools also received an accredited rating during its first MSIP review, which was the highest rating issued by the state at that time.

"We received notification that we would retain full accreditation status by the state," said Superintendent Ernie Lawson. "They listed several strengths, including our extra large number of exploratory courses offered at the junior high and elementary levels."

He said the district was also praised for the percentage of graduates receiving College Preparatory Studies certificates and the percentage of graduates completing vocational education programs.

While the overall review of the district was very good, Lawson said several areas of concern were noted in the report.

He said some of the problems noted by the team -- like the limited amount of computer-related technology at the elementary level and the facilities problems in the elementary schools -- were foreseen by district administrators.

They were problems the district could not correct prior to the review, he said, and they will take a sizable financial commitment to improve.

"The (Parents as Teachers) program is housed in an old building, and we have two mobile units with shared-classrooms that were also pointed out in the report," Lawson said. "Until we do a building project, there's really nothing we can do about that. Our long range plans include an addition to our elementary school which should take care of the concerns. I'm assuming within the next year or two they'll probably go to the board and take a vote on it."

The district was also told it needed to improve a dropout rate that has climbed over the past five years to its current 9 percent and low Missouri Mastery Achievement Test (MMAT) scores.

Lawson said both numbers were misleading because of the way they were factored.

"(The dropout rate) has been going up, but I don't think it's been going up at the rate people think," Lawson said. "We've only recently settled on a firmer definition of what a true drop-out is.

"Our elementary MMAT scores are actually quite good, it's just the fact that two years weren't considered because we didn't give the MMAT. Our elementary teachers decided they wanted to give a different test because they wanted to consider how our students performed against national scores. We were told we could do that, but we didn't know how it would hurt us during the MMAT."

The report also stated the school board was overly-involved in administrative duties and under-communicative with district staff and the community.

"Interviews indicate that, on occasion, the board has become involved in administrative functions and has demonstrated a lack of effective communications with the staff and community," the report states.