Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Missouri

 


 


 

Show Me an Achievement Gap

In the nineteenth century, St. Louis was known as the Gateway to the West. At least in the realm of education, today the city and its state retain a Wild West feel. Local authorities call the shots, and the best interests of those they're charged with protecting-students, especially needy students-are too often low on their list of priorities.

Jane Cunningham, chairwoman of the Missouri House education committee and a Republican, has consistently supported a variety of reform initiatives. When education leaders testify before her committee, she takes impish pride in putting this question to them: "How is what you're advocating

best for children?" "You ought to see people dance around that question," she said.

They have reason to squirm. Achievement scores of Missouri's poor and minority students are devastatingly low (only 4 percent of African-American eighth-graders are proficient in math), and over the past decade or so they've made no gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

The Show-Me State legalized charter schools in 1998, though just in Kansas City and St. Louis. Some 20 percent of Kansas City youngsters now attend charters; in St. Louis, it's 12 percent.

Despite poor support from district leaders and markedly less funding per student than traditional schools, the new schools are holding their own. According to Kirk Farmer, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association, about half the charters surpass the median performance of St. Louis and Kansas City district schools and are improving at a faster rate.

Charters aren't the whole story. Stan Johnson, assistant commissioner for school improvement in the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, also points to a recent increase in graduation requirements. Starting with the freshman class of 2006-2007, students are required to take an additional class in each core content area to graduate. That makes four English courses and three each of math, science, and social studies.

This improvement in graduation requirements is a positive step, provided, of course, that material covered in these extra classes is content-rich and challenging. The state's academic standards, however, give little reason for confidence. They earn a grade of D- and rank a lowly 37th in the nation.

Worse, the state's exam, the Missouri Assessment Program, is being watered down. In this report, Missouri received an A for its rigorous definition of  proficiency, a grade based on the work of Paul Peterson and Rick Hess for Education Next. Since the publication of that study, however, the state has reduced the difficulty of the exam to, in the words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "...help cast. Missouri in a more favorable light under the federal No Child Left Behind Act."

The state is pushing to increase schools' emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by collaborating with professionals and businesses in STEM-oriented industries. That might prove difficult in the classroom, however, given the state's rigid teacher certification requirements. Under current guidelines, professionals can't become certified to teach in public schools without jumping through a mind-numbing array of education courses on their own time.

That's more hassle than most experts want to go through to teach physics or math in the classroom. There is a chance that the state will welcome the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), which is centered on a rigorous assessments of teachers' subject matter knowledge and pedagogical know-how, to help certify more teachers in these areas. But the idea hasn't yet attracted enough support among legislators to make it a reality.

Efforts to put parents more in charge of where they school their children have met similar fates. Recent efforts to enact tax credits  for families whose children attend private schools have fallen by the political wayside. "My personal feeling is that we've never really reached where we can go until the consumers are in charge," Cunningham said. "We don't have a free market. It's a monopoly."

But reforms such as charters and alternative paths to the classroom will get nowhere if leadership in the state's two largest districts-St. Louis and Kansas City-doesn't settle down. In Kansas City, the leadership problem is profound. Cheri Shannon, who heads the city's most successful charter school, University Academy, notes that a "bandwagon" approach prevails in her city: too many plans promoted by a revolving door of ever-changing leaders. In one twenty-one-year stretch, she notes, there were nineteen superintendents.

Consequently, when it comes to embracing reform, "the teachers just wait it out," Shannon said. "They believe, ‘Hang on long enough and this guy's gone, we really don't have to change.' There has been a real passive resistance to change."

The situation is hardly better in St. Louis, where the district has just hired its fourth superintendent in three years. Diana Bourisaw took the reins following the school board's  dismissal of reformed-minded superintendent Creg Williams.

The situation has gotten so bad that Missouri's commissioner of education, Kent King, has formed a special advisory committee to generate ideas for effective reform in St. Louis.

Governor Matt Blunt, meanwhile, has shown scant interest in reforming the public schools.  Aside from his recent announcement that all Missouri public schools will receive emergency weather radios, all is quiet on his front. The state can hardly afford the silence.

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