For the first time in five years, math scores on standardized tests for students in Missouri dropped this year, while overall scores in communication arts remained flat.
The percentage of students statewide who passed math decreased to 53.9 percent this year from 55.5 percent in 2012, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. On Missouri Assessment Program tests in reading and writing, 55.6 percent of students passed — the same rate as in 2012.
The scores follow what had been years of modest, but sustained improvement by Missouri public school students.
“We’ve got to step it up in order to keep pace,†said Missouri’s Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro, noting that other states and countries are moving ahead.
The test results also show the state is failing to bridge a gap in the performance between white and minority students.
People are also reading…
The scores released Tuesday were a first glimpse of data state education officials plan to make public on Friday. It will include district and school results on the MAP tests, part of performance measures such as attendance and graduation rates that are used by the state to determine accreditation status.
Friday also will mark the debut of the state’s new rating system for districts, a more rigorous scale that will create greater distinctions between higher-performing schools and intensify the pressure on those that are struggling. The results will provide an indication of how much work needs to be done in unaccredited districts, such as Normandy and Riverview Gardens, to receive a better standing.
The State Board of Education, which met Monday and Tuesday in Jefferson City, reviewed some of the results on the standardized tests.
“If you take the longer view of, say, a 10-year window, the state of Missouri is making progress,†said Peter Herschend, board president. “The difficulty is we’re not making as much progress as we want. We have to do better in the long run.â€
The results of the Missouri Assessment Program tests are from the 2012-2013 school year for nearly 600,000 students in grades 3 through 12. Also notable in the state results:
• Science scores improved. The percent of students passing — scoring proficient or advanced — rose to 59.1 percent from 52.2 percent in 2012. In Biology I, there was a sizable jump. The percentage of students passing went from 55.1 percent in 2012 to 74 percent in 2013 — an increase state officials have yet to explain.
• Missouri changed the way students took the state’s standardized math tests this year. Previously, eighth-graders in Algebra I took both the regular grade-level math assessment and the Algebra I end-of-course test. The eighth-grade Algebra students in these results took only the end-of-course test, meaning the students most advanced in math were no longer taking the grade-level test.
• The achievement gap persists. The passing rates of white and black students in reading were 61.2 percent and 32.6 percent, respectively. In math, the passing rates for white and black students were 59.2 percent and 30.2 percent.
The focus on testing has intensified since 2001, when the federal No Child Left Behind Act took effect. The law’s intent was to increase accountability among teachers, and close the achievement gap between white and minority students.
But in the last five years, at least, the achievement gap has remained largely unchanged.
This year, passing rates between black and white students are 28.6 percentage points apart in reading. The two are 29 percentage points apart in math. Both groups of students have been improving their passing rates over time.
“That’s just a stubborn gap that has been 25 to 30 points for a long, long time,†said Kathleen Sullivan Brown, associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Certainly, black students are more likely than white children to be attending schools in troubled school systems. So are children living in poverty.
“I don’t think it’s just the school district,†Brown said. “It’s the whole life experience of students.â€
Yet while students living in poverty are more likely to struggle academically, they are performing better on state tests, the data show. This year, 41.7 tested at grade level in reading, compared with 36 percent in 2009. And 41.3 percent passed the math exam, compared with 33.7 percent four years ago.
Under a new Missouri law, the State Board of Education now can act sooner in unaccredited districts such as Kansas City, Normandy and Riverview Gardens. Officials are considering options to address chronic underperformance there and in other struggling school districts in the state.
Following a Missouri Supreme Court ruling this summer, students in unaccredited Normandy and Riverview Gardens schools had the chance to transfer to nearby accredited districts — an offer that more than 2,600 students accepted.
The board’s action Tuesday gives the state education department an opportunity to more closely monitor school districts’ instruction and finances.
“In the midst of all this transfer discussion, we certainly don’t want to overlook the fact that 75 percent of the children in those districts are still there and they have a right to quality education,†Nicastro said.
The board also agreed to hire the Denver-based Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust to perform a $385,000 study of the Kansas City Public Schools, which lost accreditation last year but have not started transferring students because of a separate ongoing lawsuit. The board’s study is being funded by the Hall Family Foundation and the Kaufman Foundation.
Herschend said he hopes some of the ideas in the study will work in districts such as Riverview and Normandy.
“What we’re after is the causes of failure on the part of unaccredited districts and what steps can we on this level take to eliminate or minimize that failure,†Herschend said.
Elizabeth Crisp of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
