We’ve written a lot at the Show-Me Institute lately about A–F letter grades for public schools. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) will soon begin assigning these grades to all schools and districts under an executive order from Governor Kehoe. Legislation to codify the order may follow, depending on how the 2026 session unfolds.

A central component of these letter grades is student growth. Growth measures how much students learn over the course of a year, based on state assessments. To estimate growth, the state uses a statistical model to generate a “predicted” level of progress for each student. Schools and districts are then evaluated based on how their students perform relative to those predictions. In simple terms, high-growth schools are those where students consistently outperform expectations. You can read more about the Missouri Growth Model here.

I’ve studied academic growth extensively and believe it is the most accurate indicator of school effectiveness we have. No other measure comes close.

New evidence in support of this view comes from a study by researchers at MIT. The study compares test-score growth to a popular alternative for evaluating school quality: schoolwide surveys. The authors assess how well growth-based and survey-based measures predict important student outcomes, including high school graduation, graduating with distinction, and college enrollment and persistence.

The MIT study was conducted in New York City, where the district administers surveys to students, families, teachers, and staff. The surveys are designed to capture school climate across several domains: rigorous instruction, teacher collaboration, supportive environments, and trust. School surveys are intuitively appealing, especially for those who are skeptical of standardized tests. But how do they stack up to growth when it comes to identifying schools that produce strong outcomes for students?

The answer: not very well. The surveys are a little better at predicting high school graduation, but much worse at predicting more meaningful and differentiated outcomes including graduating high school with an advanced diploma, enrolling in college, and persistence in college. The authors conclude: “From the point of view of parents seeking to boost their children’s odds of going to college, test information is most valuable.”

The research evidence on the value of student growth as an indicator of school quality is overwhelming. This is just the newest study to add to the list. School surveys are nice, but when it comes to identifying effective schools, objectively measured growth is far superior.

The post Test-Score Growth Is the Best Metric We Have for Understanding School Performance appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Visit the site: moschoolrankings.org/

Susan Pendergrass and Avery Frank join Zach Lawhorn to discuss MOSchoolRankings.org, the Show-Me Institute’s website that assigns letter grades and GPAs to Missouri schools and districts using publicly available academic and spending data. They explore how the site works, why Missouri has lagged behind other states on accessible school report cards, and how the governor’s executive order requiring A through F grades may change that. They also discuss the most common objections to grading schools, how growth and proficiency data account for differences in student populations, the status of report card legislation in the 2026 session, and more.

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 Episode Transcript

Zach Lawhorn (00:00): Welcome to the Show-Me Institute podcast. I’m Zach Lawhorn from Show-Me Opportunity, and today I’m joined by Susan Pendergrass and Avery Frank from the Show-Me Institute. Susan, welcome back to the podcast as a guest — we’re really making a habit of this. Today we’re going to talk about MOSchoolRankings.org, which is a website that was launched a few years ago now at this point. So we’re going to talk about some updates, some new data, some improvements that have been made to the site. But for the handful of people who haven’t yet visited MOSchoolRankings.org, Susan, just give us a primer. What is it? What’s the idea of the site, and then we’ll kind of talk about the upgrades.

Susan Pendergrass (00:35): Yeah, MOSchoolRankings has been the subject of a couple of ironic moments in history, one being that we decided to launch this in 2018-19. We decided that because we’ve complained a lot about how the state doesn’t do informative report cards that parents can understand — simple, ideally with a letter grade because everyone gets that. And we looked at this model that is used by the Fraser Institute in Canada, where they also rank order all the schools. So you can see this school compared to the rest of the schools in the state is number one and this one is number 2,500. So we decided we would rank order and assign letter grades to only academic measures, which is really pretty groundbreaking. In 2018-19 we picked the only academic measures really available, which is proficiency in reading, proficiency in math, proficiency in reading and math for only low-income students to get a measure of achievement gaps or how districts deal with low-income students, a measure of how a particular school or district would expect to do in reading and math based on the percentage of low-income students they serve, and the growth model that was developed and is used by the state. ACT scores and graduation rates. So a total of the most would be 10 measures for each school that we assign letter grades to using a very simple curve where we took the full range of scores. For example, graduation rates might go from 75% to 100%. We divided that into five equal sections and assigned letter grades. So an F would be 75% to 80% and an A would be 95% to 100%. Did the same thing for all 10 measures — took the range, divided by five, and assigned the letter grades that way, which is a curve, and you get most of the schools and districts in the middle: Cs, 2.0 grade point averages. And we decided that when we set those grade intervals, we wouldn’t change them so that we could see over time whether Missouri schools are doing better or worse than they did in 2018-19. Same for districts. And of course we had no idea there would be a global pandemic. The next year’s data in 2019-20 was not usable, and then we get into 2021, still difficult with schools reopening. There was some pressure at that time to recalibrate all the grades and make them more based on the COVID environment, but we didn’t. We stuck with our 2018-19 letter grades, and we currently have six years of data on there now. We kept 2018-19 so that we can see whether schools have caught up or not from what happened during COVID. And from the first year, we took 10 letter grades and combined them into a GPA, just like you would see on a college or high school report card. Very simple approach — an A is worth four points and an F is worth zero points. And we combine them into a GPA.

What we did this year is we took the GPA and just made that a letter grade. Same GPA, same rank order, but for folks who don’t readily get the GPA thing, we just made the GPA also a letter grade. It’s kind of helpful and a little weird because you don’t get an overall letter grade on your high school report card or your college report card, but we took your overall GPA and turned it into a letter grade. At the same time, the governor in January signed an executive order requiring the state to create report cards and have a single letter grade on them. So we were already in the process of doing this, and our newest data on the website also reflect the single letter grade for each school and each district. We just happened to do it at the same time as the governor’s executive order. So it’s going to be really interesting to be able to compare our site and our letter grades to what the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education comes up with. It shouldn’t be the case that ours are dramatically different than theirs — we use proficiency, growth, and graduation rates just like they do — but ours is equally weighted, and time will tell how theirs are weighted.

Zach Lawhorn (04:49): All right, before we move on, I want to make one thing perfectly clear, because you used “we” and “our” a lot, and then you said “they” — we use the same data they use. So when people hear that Show-Me Institute has this website that grades schools and assigns GPAs, talk to me about the methodology, the data — what data are you using and where specifically did you get it?

Susan Pendergrass (05:11): So what we do is, when DESE releases test score data, we go to the DESE website and we download it. DESE does not release score data — we request it through a data request to DESE, they give it to us. We download the graduation rate data from DESE. We download the ACT data from DESE. That’s all of the data behind the letter grades. We simply take it from DESE. It’s the same data in the APR scores, the same data used for MSIP 6. It’s all the same test, same test scores. We don’t make any of it up. The only thing we do is put it on a curve and assign it a letter grade.

I should have mentioned that four years ago we added finance data to the website, so it’s kind of a dual website — one side is academic, one side is finance. That’s because every school district in the state does a massive comprehensive financial report to DESE every year called the Annual Secretary to the Board report, and it has so much revenue and expenditure data — like hundreds of lines of it. We decided to download those from DESE and convert them into something that a reasonable person could understand. It’s like 14 pages and very complicated. We convert that into just revenues and expenditures and donut charts, and we tried to make that as accessible to folks as well. So if you look at the academic data for a district, you can go over and look at the finance data and see how much they’re spending, how they’re spending it — down to the most granular detail: how much did they spend on substitute teachers, how much did they spend on advertising, how much did they spend on gas for the buses. So all of that is in there too, and we think that gives a really good comprehensive look at every school district.

Zach Lawhorn (07:00): And Avery has been heavily involved in this process, including the data checking. Tell me a little bit about what that process has been like. And Susan described what she hopes the website has accomplished — when you work on MOSchoolRankings.org, what do you hope it accomplishes? What’s your goal?

Avery Frank (07:18): Well, I hope it really makes it accessible to average everyday folks — for teachers, for administrators, for parents — because this data is very hard to interpret. It’s very messy. The Annual Secretary to the Board report she’s talking about — those things are very hard to compile together into one central location. It’s very hard to understand, there’s a lot of jargon. One of our missions is to make our education system as transparent and as accessible to parents and average citizens as possible. So we put it all together in one place and they can look at it and hopefully do some investigating themselves. Maybe it’s hard to find some of the outliers in spending, but if a parent who knows their district pretty well looks and sees they’re spending a lot on electricity, or buildings, or textbooks, they might think, wait, this seems way out of normal — and then they can go investigate and be more informed to hold their school districts and schools accountable, both on the grade side and the finance side.

Zach Lawhorn (08:30): And Susan, we so often do here in Missouri — let’s talk about what other states are doing. Is this idea of easily accessible, easily understandable report cards for schools a novel idea, or have other states been doing this for a while?

Susan Pendergrass (08:47): Well, Florida was kind of the leader in letter grades for schools and districts. They started in the 90s, so maybe 35 years ago. They started putting letter grades on schools and districts, and they immediately coupled that with: if a child goes to a D school for two years or an F school for one year, they don’t have to go there — they can choose a different public school, which makes a lot of sense.

During the last Trump administration, there was a big push for understandable report cards. Every state is required to produce report cards by federal law — if you take federal money, you have to make a report card for every school in the district. What those look like is kind of up in the air, and they’re supposed to meaningfully differentiate between schools and districts. Missouri has gotten by with, like Avery said, initially a school report card written at the 16th grade level, which is like graduate school — very jargony, a lot of acronyms. Box checked, we’ve got report cards. No one could understand them, but that’s fine. There has been a push at the federal level, and hackathons and websites to show you how to make good ones. There’s a large foundation called ExcelinEd that has devoted multiple resources to what makes a good report card. So there’s a push for this, and Missouri has really resisted it until the executive order by the governor this year.

What Missouri does — and I think it’s the opposite of leading — is it puts the word “accredited,” “partially accredited,” or “unaccredited” on districts, and out of 520 districts, about six — I mean, 98% are fully accredited. So they use this system where everyone passes; maybe six out of 520 don’t. And it’s really misleading for parents. And worse, when St. Louis became fully accredited even though individual school buildings weren’t, they put “fully accredited” posters on the buildings. I think parents want this information. Parents talk at soccer fields or after-school programs — they kind of know if their school is doing okay or not. But no one is helping them get really easy-to-understand information. Lots of other states do letter grades. States that stopped doing letter grades, like Indiana, are going back to letter grades. It’s the one thing that everyone understands. So we are not in any way breaking new ground here.

Avery Frank (11:23): And again, with transparency and accessibility — I think Susan is definitely right about DESE just following the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, because they really do report just the numbers. There’s not a lot of context for them. Like if you see a district that says 40% proficient in English, is that really good? Is that bad? How does that compare to everyone else? You can’t just report the data flat out for just one district because you don’t know the context. Maybe 40% for a 100% low-income district would be excellent. But 40% for a Clayton or a Ladue would be horrible. So you have to have context both for the types of students that are there and the growth of that district. Are they doing better than they have in the past? And are they doing better in comparison to everyone? Because if everyone is failing, the scale is going to adjust. If you have a lot of people failing and some really succeeding, that breaks the curve, and we have to start looking at what those other districts are doing because it shows that good performance is possible. That’s why I really think a report card with relative context, based on how their students are and how the rest of the state is doing, is really important.

Zach Lawhorn (12:45): All right, so Susan, my understanding when we started this project a few years ago was that our hope was that the state of Missouri would kind of take the baton — that we would start this, but it would be great if the state was able to produce an easily accessible, understandable school report card that Show-Me Institute and Show-Me Opportunity had nothing to do with. Am I correct?

Susan Pendergrass (13:12): That’s right. It was like six or seven years ago when we started with 2018-19 data, and we just posted 2024-25. I didn’t want to be in the school report card business — I don’t work for DESE — but there was a vacuum of information in the state that we decided to fill. And we have said that we’re committed to filling it until the state takes over. That could happen with the new report cards. They have access to all the data, better data than we have access to — student-level data. They can do much more in-depth analysis and I suspect they will. The governor’s executive order includes something called “growth to proficiency,” which is a new model that the state is going to have to create using experts in the field. Maybe they’ll be better. I suspect that when DESE puts out the report cards for the first time with letter grades, there’s going to be a lot of conversation. There’s going to be a lot of pushback. I don’t think many people whose kids are in F schools will be shocked, but I think some people whose kids are in maybe C schools will be shocked because they’re under the impression their kids are in A schools. It’s going to be interesting. Typically when you survey parents, they give their own kid’s school very high marks, so it’s going to be a dose of reality for a lot of folks. And I think that’s the conversation that we’ve been wanting to start for a long time, because if you just listened to what the state and legislators say, you would think that Missouri is doing just fine — and we’re not.

Zach Lawhorn (14:42): And Avery, Susan mentioned pushback. As you’ve been working on this project and following the governor’s executive order for the state to produce A through F report cards, what are some of the common objections to putting letter grades on schools, or really just making school performance and spending data more accessible?

Avery Frank (15:07): Honestly, the most pushback I hear is against the Missouri Assessment Program, or the MAP itself. A couple of senators said that it’s a “useless autopsy” and that we shouldn’t tie any incentives to a flawed test, because a lot of people want a test that tests throughout the year — more of a formative assessment rather than a summative assessment at the end of the year. But the MAP is a good test at the end of the year because we get to have everyone take the same test at the same time and then compare the results. That’s what it’s really for, and there’s a lot of pushback on that idea in general.

If we don’t have those kinds of tests, we can’t see how everyone’s doing relative to one another. There wouldn’t be any context if we’re not comparing to one another. If everyone’s doing their own test and their own grades, they can see how they’re performing relative to themselves, but they can’t see how they’re performing relative to one another. Of course there’s also some pushback about which type of grade should be weighted more — should we weight growth more, total proficiency more, expected proficiency versus actual proficiency more? There are going to be arguments for which rating scale should be used and what the weighting should be, because that will favor different districts.

Susan Pendergrass (16:47): Here’s the pushback we get: schools aren’t letter grades, schools aren’t test scores, teachers do so many things that have nothing to do with how kids do on a test, letter grades are racist and classist because it’s mostly low-income children of color who go to the D and F schools, and if we point that out then we are being racist towards them. We are not acknowledging the hard work of teachers. There’s already a video circulating against school report cards because this is not how schools should be measured — because they do so much more. I hear the same tropes over and over.

On the other hand, I think it was President George W. Bush who said, if you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it. The reality is we might not want to look at our bank balance or the scale, but if we just say no, I’m so much more than my credit score, then we’ll never fix it. And this is what Missouri’s been doing for a long time — let’s not make anyone feel bad. We don’t want the kids to feel bad, the parents to feel bad, the teachers to feel bad. And somebody even said in the discussion around report cards happening right now, because the legislature is considering legislation on report cards in addition to the executive order: why couldn’t every school be an A? They really want to believe that we can create this environment where everyone feels good about what’s happening.

But in the states that have been doing this for a long time, like Florida — not only has Florida had letter grades for 30 years, but as too many schools and districts get A’s and B’s, they raise the bar. They move the goalposts further to push schools and districts harder. As a result, Florida fourth graders are top 10 in the country on the national test, where we’re in the low 30s, more like 36 to 38 out of 50 states. Florida is top 10 because they keep pushing themselves, and this is how you push. The pushback on report cards is basically: it makes people feel bad, it’s racist, and it doesn’t acknowledge all the work that schools do.

Zach Lawhorn (18:54): Okay, so let’s engage with the context argument that a school is more than a letter grade. As the legislature moves through this process now, moving on from the governor’s EO to actually forming legislation, Susan, as they design the criteria, what are some of the things they should keep in mind that can hopefully account for some of that context?

Susan Pendergrass (19:24): DESE in doing the executive order report cards is looking at proficiency, growth, and growth to proficiency. But it’s going to be really interesting, especially in how they weight them. What we found with our letter grades is some districts do really well on proficiency and not so well on growth, because their kids come in better prepared. In some of the higher-income districts, kids aren’t getting a year’s worth of growth in a year, and I would argue that they should. And then you see some real standouts that serve more disadvantaged students — their proficiency numbers are pretty low, but their growth is more than expected. Their growth is higher than the statewide average. Basically, the state reports growth in terms of whether it’s higher or lower than the statewide growth, and some of them have higher-than-average growth. Those are schools and districts we should be looking at really closely to see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

How they weight the measures is going to make a big difference, because if they weight growth really high, then some of the districts you think are the highest performing in the state will be B’s and C’s. They’re looking for schools and districts that are getting kids the furthest down the road, not just the benchmark of proficiency.

Zach Lawhorn (20:49): Okay, so it’s correct to say that for people who are not familiar with growth and proficiency, if the claim is it’s unfair to grade schools because they serve different student populations, that is acknowledged and accounted for in these models.

Susan Pendergrass (21:08): Yeah, and people who just believe their kids go to a fantastic school are going to have to keep believing it regardless of what the letter grade is. But it is going to find those high-flying performers that are doing really well with growth and growth to proficiency, even if their test scores are low. And then you’re going to have some schools that just don’t have good proficiency and don’t have good growth, and a lot of their kids are below basic. So this growth-to-proficiency model is about how you get the lowest performers to move hopefully up toward grade level, and it’s going to point those out as well. I’m looking forward to seeing exactly what they come up with. The executive order has some flexibility in it so that the experts and statisticians putting it together can determine the best mix. It’s going to be really interesting to see how it turns out and to see that first set of grades in September.

Zach Lawhorn (22:05): Avery, we’ve got MOSchoolRankings.org, then we’ve got the governor’s EO, and currently the legislature is working on legislation. So as we sit here in the second half of the 2026 session, what’s the status of the legislation?

Avery Frank (22:22): The legislation passed out of the House already and they’re hearing it in the Senate now. It’s undergoing some changes. We’ll see how it turns out in the Senate. There was a school climate survey that was attached to it that’s up in the air as well. We will see what the final bill looks like. Hopefully the legislation sticks close to the governor’s EO, which was really good in my opinion. There are a lot of great aspects to it. There’s going to be a lot of senators trying to advocate for their district — some are going to want more weight towards proficiency, some are going to want more weight towards growth, some are going to want no ratings at all because their districts are doing badly and they want to cover it up. So there are going to be a lot of different political moves trying to mess with the grading scale, and I hope it sticks as close to the EO as possible because I really do think it was a well-written EO.

Susan Pendergrass (23:33): I agree. The legislature can do what they want — if they pass a really good school report card bill, that’d be great. But I wonder if it wouldn’t be smarter to let the executive order play out and get that first set of grades and see how they look. Then the legislature next January can start thinking about what would be a better way of doing it. They’re kind of jumping the gun by wanting to get it into legislation. And I suspect, like Avery said, it’s possible that some lawmakers are thinking they don’t like the EO and they can do something with the law to water it down. But I don’t think a watered-down version is going to end up getting to the governor’s desk. So I think the EO is probably the most watered-down version that would get to the governor’s desk, and what might make more sense is to reconsider it in the future when we know how it’s even going to work.

Zach Lawhorn (24:35): All right, well, it sounds like that as with all things, once the political process kicks in, there’s a lot to be considered and debated. For now, until the state of Missouri produces something great and Susan and Avery get to spend more of their time on other projects, you can go to MOSchoolRankings.org. You can find performance-level data, GPA, letter grades, and spending data. Susan and Avery, before we wrap up, is there anything we haven’t covered that you want to make sure we highlight?

Susan Pendergrass (25:17): Yeah, just one thing — when it first came out in 2020, it took folks a while to understand that when grades are curved, you get a lot of Cs. If the statewide average is a C, then a C means you’re at the statewide average. If you get a B, you’re better than the statewide average. If you get a D, you’re worse. I think people — maybe thinking of ourselves or our kids or our grandchildren — think the only good grade is an A and a B is okay. It’s really not that. A C is average. A C is a good grade. It means you’re at the statewide average. A B is better and an A is better than that. We didn’t use grade inflation where everyone gets an A.

Zach Lawhorn (26:07): And on the site you can find the full methodology — we post all that. There’s a glossary of terms. And you can download the full data set. So if you go to MOSchoolRankings.org and you say these people are full of it, you have access to the same data that Susan and Avery had.

Susan Pendergrass (26:29): Transparency was always our goal with this whole thing — it’s not my numbers. Our goal throughout has been just to make a transparent system. I’ve had members of the media writing stories who find it easier to just download our data set rather than go to 10 different DESE files. Our finance data set is like a lifesaver for folks because we took something very complex and made it accessible. I’ve had people use our data in lawsuits — people arguing about which school is better. I think a lot of folks have gotten comfortable with our method and now use our rankings when they come out. A lot of schools are doing better than they did before the pandemic — not every school is doing worse, so you can find those schools too. I’ve had school boards that want us to present on how it works, and I do think we’ve had a lot of buy-in on the method. And one thing I can say in our defense is we haven’t changed anything — everything is the same as it’s been for seven years. There was a time when DESE switched how they calculated the growth numbers from being centered on zero to centered on 50, or the reverse. So we have to make changes as DESE makes changes. But other than changes that DESE has made, we haven’t changed one thing. We now have line graphs so you can look at how your school was doing in 2018-19 and see how it’s doing six years later. That’s all really important.

Avery Frank (28:07): The website has a lot of cool features. It’s very interesting if you want to do some research on both the finance side and the academic side. There’s a misconception in education that more money equals better results. And this is just directly pulled from MOSchoolRankings — Valley Park has 34% free and reduced-price lunch students, they spend $36,000 per student, and they got a C. But then you look at Festus, which has 28% free and reduced-price lunch students, they spend $13,000 per student, and they received an A. There are a lot of districts like that. You can compare and ask: wait, these districts spend a lot more money, they have the same types of students, but they’re doing a lot worse. You can use that data to show that it’s not just about money. And the last thing I’d add is that we have both schools and school districts. So if you want to see how your district as a whole is doing, you can look at that. And if you want to look at your specific school within your district, you can compare schools within your district and across the state, which is also a very cool feature.

Zach Lawhorn (29:18): And you mentioned spending data — if you go to the home page of MOSchoolRankings.org, in the upper right-hand corner there’s a button that says “Rank by Spending,” and it’s a whole new world from the performance data to the spending data.

Susan Pendergrass (29:31): Any feedback is welcome, right?

Zach Lawhorn (29:34): Yeah, we take notes. We take comments. Okay, one more time: MOSchoolRankings.org. Go to the website, find your school. Susan, Avery, thank you very much.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Grading Missouri Schools with Susan Pendergrass and Avery Frank appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While the Missouri Legislature continues to debate A–F school report cards, the Show-Me Institute recently released our annual report card update on MOSchoolRankings.org.

Our rankings are built on a model that incorporates 10 academic indicators of student success. All data are sourced from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and all English/language arts (ELA) and math scores are based on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). Each component is weighted equally, and a full explanation of the methodology is available online.

Table 1 shows all 24 public school districts and charter schools that received an “A” in the 2024–2025 school year.

Suburban and rural districts dominate the top rankings, with numerous districts from St. Louis County (Ladue, Brentwood, Clayton). Many of the rural school districts are exceptionally small: Skyline has 81 students and Thornfield has 48. The largest school district on the list is Nixa Public Schools (near Springfield) with 6,518 students.

The suburban districts have relatively low rates of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL)—a common proxy for school poverty rate. Fewer than 10 percent of Ladue and Clayton students were eligible for FRPL, with Brentwood at 18 percent, Nixa at 26 percent, Festus at 28 percent, and Ozark at 35 percent. However, some rural “A” districts have a sizeable number of lower-income students.

Mansfield R-IV, which had 60 percent of its 622 students qualify for FRPL, performed above average in almost every single category (except in ELA growth). Richwoods R-VII, a small rural district about an hour from St. Louis, had 100 percent of its 125 students qualify for FRPL and had particularly impressive scores in math. These examples demonstrate that low-income schools can achieve academic success.

There is a lot more to delve into for academic performance. Table 1 is just one snapshot of what is available on MOSchoolRankings.org. Accountability tools like these can help highlight success stories, identify areas for improvement, and provide a clearer picture of how schools across Missouri are performing.

The post Looking at Missouri’s “A” Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Missouri House of Representatives recently passed a bill requiring that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) assign A–F letter grades to schools and districts statewide. The bill now heads to the Senate, which is also considering its own version.

The legislation is meant to build on and improve Governor Kehoe’s executive order from January. Unfortunately, it does not improve on the executive order; in fact, the version that emerged from the House is much worse.

The main problem with the House bill is that it has veered off topic. Governor Kehoe’s short and simple executive order mandates letter grades based on academic performance. This is what we need. The House bill adds language that would create new school climate ratings based on surveys of teachers, parents, and students, which would also go on the report card.

This is problematic for three reasons:

Most importantly, it will distract us from academic outcomes. Academics are where our schools are struggling, and until we focus on them, the situation is not going to improve. This is illustrated most easily with data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is widely viewed as providing the most credible test data in the country. Here are charts showing changes over time in Missouri’s national rank on NAEP, in 4th- and 8th-grade reading, since about the turn of the century:

Our 4th-grade reading results are especially bleak—we rank 38th out of the 50 states as of 2024, whereas two decades earlier we ranked in the low twenties. Today, an alarming 42 percent of our 4th graders score Below Basic on NAEP.

Making matters worse, our ranking decline since about 2015 is in the context of generally declining test scores nationwide. Our scores are declining faster than the rest of a declining nation.

Governor Kehoe was correct to focus on academic outcomes, and the focus should stay that way.

Unlike data on academic achievement, which we already collect, survey data for this new school-climate requirement do not exist. It is difficult to develop and implement a high-quality survey with a high response rate. Have our lawmakers considered how we would get these surveys done?

As one of several concrete technical issues, consider the survey response rate. We cannot make parents fill out surveys. So, what if they don’t? What if we end up with schools and districts where fewer than 10 percent of parents fill out a survey (which is very possible)? Are we going to hold a school with a 10-percent parent response rate accountable for negative survey results? If the results look good, are we going to give the school a high rating?

Even if we ignore the first two issues, do we really want to compel DESE to undertake this work? We hear a lot of grumbling around the capitol about how DESE has gotten too big. This is how that happens. Developing and administering surveys to Missouri’s more than 800,000 students and their parents, and 70,000 teachers, across thousands of schools and hundreds of districts would require more administrative expansion. That is far outside the low-cost, straightforward scope of the original report card plan.

Governor Kehoe issued a clear and simple executive order on school and district report cards in January, which properly emphasizes academic performance. The order is fundamentally sound. There’s always room for improvement, but the legislation that came out of the House has moved this effort in the wrong direction. We hope our lawmakers can get it back on track.

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QNS, a local news outlet covering Queens, New York, released an interesting article about a local high school under investigation by New York City Public Schools. Teachers at the school claim they are forced to pass failing students. Such blatant grade-inflation policies are uncommon, but I suspect softer versions of the policy are rampant in our public schools nationwide, including here in Missouri.

The quotes in the article speak for themselves, so I’ll just copy and paste them here without commentary:

“Students regularly fail tests and other assignments, teachers [said], but still receive passing grades.”

“‘Students have mentioned that it’s not fair that they’re trying and then they see classmates show up half the time and have nearly an equivalent grade,’ the teacher said. ‘They get frustrated, which will then demotivate them from doing work because they think it’s an unfair policy.’”

“Last year’s mastery grading policy stated . . . that any grades a student receives that are not 100 would not be included in their [final] grade.”

“While teachers maintain the ability to draft their own syllabi, they said that many teachers have been forced to adjust their expectations over time due to the current school administration. ‘I was guided in trying to avoid failing students,’ [one] teacher said.”

“The teacher . . . said that if they did not reach a certain percentage of students passing the class—80%—they would be called into a meeting with the administration to discuss how they could improve the grades of students.”

“One teacher said out of around 100 students, they haven’t seen over 20 of them all school year. If they must pass 80% of the students, that means anyone who shows up to class must pass in order to achieve that goal, regardless of whether the students do any work.”

—————–

I know I just copied and pasted this whole assignment. It seems lazy, but in my defense, this is A-level effort in many of our schools.

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Jokes aside, I came across a recent poll from the yes. every kid. foundation that reminded me of a vital pairing for holding education systems accountable: understandable information and comparable information.

The poll is nationwide, but the results apply to Missouri. Parents want to hold schools accountable, but they need high-quality information to engage.

Our annual Blueprint has consistently emphasized the importance of building informational resources that are both understandable and comparable. Missouri provides some data, but there is no central, user-friendly landing place where parents can easily access and evaluate information about the quality of their children’s schools.

For instance, this data dashboard from DESE reports a number of understandable statistics for the year, but you cannot compare districts to each other. Some DESE sources are difficult to decipher and navigate altogether. And if a parent truly wants to compare districts and years, they will need to break out their Microsoft Excel skills.

Using DESE’s dashboard, a parent can see that 58 percent of Parkway C-2 students scored proficient or advanced in mathematics on the Missouri Assessment Program. But is that good? Isn’t 70 percent usually a passing score? How does it compare to last year? How does it compare to other districts across the state? Should a parent be concerned, or encouraged?

These are all important questions, and sadly, the answers require a lot of digging.

Thankfully, parents can find the answers to these questions on our own website, MOSchoolRankings.org.

There, Parkway C-2 is ranked as one of the better districts in our state: 133 out of 551 overall. In fact, its math score is the 37th best in the state. But it’s not all peachy in Parkway, as its low-income math scores ranked 378th in the state, and the overall mathematics score declined from the prior year. These statistics give meaningful context for parents to more accurately hold schools accountable.

Our website serves as a valuable resource for the state, but DESE ought to provide a similar tool—one that is even more comprehensive and accessible—using the state’s greater manpower and authority.

Taken together, survey data and practical experience point to the same conclusion: Missouri’s education system needs to be more accountable to parents. Achieving that goal requires creating resources that are both understandable and comparable.

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Susan Pendergrass is joined by Cory Koedel, director of education policy at the Show-Me Institute, and Avery Frank, policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, to discuss Missouri’s early literacy crisis. They walk through the need for a universal reading screener, the evidence behind third grade retention, why banning three cueing matters, how teacher preparation programs must change to align with the science of reading, what successful states like Mississippi have done, what Missouri’s current laws get wrong, and more.

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Timestamps

00:00 The Literacy Crisis in Missouri
04:42 Strategies for Improvement
09:37 The Role of Testing and Accountability
14:21 Retention Policies and Their Impact
19:08 Legislative Solutions and Future Prospects

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post Why Missouri Needs Early Literacy Reform with Cory Koedel and Avery Frank appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If you want great schools, you have to have great teachers. Lots of other things are important. Strong school culture, appropriate instructional materials, good curriculum, robust relationships with parents, all necessary. But it is the person, the actual human being, that puts all of that into play that is most important.

Mimicking the Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Model

Missouri could better support teachers by providing meaningful guidance and feedback. One promising model comes from Tennessee.

Launched in 2012, the Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) was designed to help educators improve. Teachers frequently express a desire to improve, but often lack resources or guidance on how to get better.

By using announced and unannounced in-class observations, academic growth data, and student performance data, TEAM calculates a teacher score (1–5 scale) that provides information to teachers and school leaders about teacher performance. The goal is not to punish teachers, but to coach them and help them improve. Observers identify one strength and one area for improvement in each lesson, keeping the process constructive, focused, and encouraging. The Tennessee Education Research Alliance at Vanderbilt University found that teachers in schools with stronger implementation of TEAM improved faster than those in schools with weaker implementation.

The evaluation promotes ongoing dialogue about what happens in the classroom and how it affects student performance, and provides a basis for professional advancement—e.g., high-performing teachers can be identified through TEAM for mentoring roles.

Initially, there was strong pushback against teacher evaluation in Tennessee, which is not surprising. At its launch, only 28 percent of teachers believed TEAM would improve student outcomes, and only 38 percent believed it would improve teacher performance. But those numbers changed quickly once teachers actually experienced TEAM, rising to 71 and 76 percent, respectively, by 2019.

Missouri should consider emulating Tennessee’s commitment to rigorous and constructive teacher evaluation. If we’re serious about improving school quality and student outcomes, we need to be serious about improving teacher quality.

The post Improving Teacher Quality to Improve Reading Quality appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are two aspects of the event that I really like. First, it recognized high-performing schools. Too often in education we choose not to differentiate school performance—we don’t punish poor performers, and we don’t reward excellence. I like that the event promoted the positive impacts of schools that generate high achievement growth. I was also pleased to see coverage of the recognition some schools received in the local media and in school newsletters and announcements (e.g., see here and here).

Second, I like that the event was centered on test-score growth, which is a far better measure of the impacts of schools than test-score levels or proficiency rates. Growth captures how much students learn during the year, not just where they start. This means schools in low-income communities are not penalized for low starting points as long as their students make good progress. This important design feature of growth is illustrated in this report from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Not surprisingly, the high-growth schools recognized at the event included many in high-poverty areas.

We need more events like this. When schools perform well, we need to recognize them, thank them, and remind them they are on the right path. This validation matters, especially for schools that show high growth despite low overall achievement levels due to external factors. Without acknowledgment, educators in these schools might not realize the positive impacts they’re making.

I hope the PRiME event becomes a mainstay and is the beginning of a more concerted effort in Missouri to reward academic excellence. If we want our schools to thrive, we need to show them that their success matters.

(Disclosure: As a researcher, one of my main areas of work is on growth modeling and value-added modeling in education. I am part of the team of researchers who estimate the growth model for DESE.)

The post PRiME Summit Celebrates Schools with Impressive Test Score Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Susan Pendergrass speaks with Adam Tyner, national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, about his new report, “Equitable” Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers. They discuss what “equitable grading” means, how widespread policies like no zeros, unlimited retakes, and no late penalties have become, and what teachers really think of these reforms, and more.

Listen on Spotify

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Equitable Grading
02:33 Understanding Equitable Grading Practices
05:25 Teacher Perspectives on Grading Policies
08:10 Survey Findings on Grading Policies
10:49 The Impact of Grading Policies on Student Engagement
13:43 Concerns Over Lowering Academic Standards
16:28 Recommendations for Grading Reform
19:16 The Future of Grading Policies in Education

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

The post The Rise of Equitable Grading with Adam Tyner appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Homework and weekly tests would no longer count toward students’ final semester grades.
• Semester grades would depend entirely on a final exam, which students could retake multiple times.
• Tardiness and absences would have no impact on grades.
• Cheating or copying would carry only non-grade-based consequences.
• The threshold for earning an A would fall to 80 percent.
• The threshold for a D would fall to 21 percent.

My first reaction was to laugh out loud. I suspect many others feel the same. Still, it’s worth pausing to consider where these ideas come from and why they resonate with some educators. Like many flawed policies, these changes are rooted in good intentions. Proponents of “Grading for Equity” see grade gaps between students from different backgrounds—by race, poverty status, etc.—and are trying to reduce those gaps. I see the same gaps, and I want them reduced, too.

But here’s the reality: grade gaps reflect real gaps in skills and knowledge. And when school ends, it’s not the letter grades that shape students’ futures—it’s the underlying skills and competencies those grades are supposed to reflect. “Grading for Equity” is just wishful thinking. It is a refusal to grapple with the truth.

Fortunately, I’m not aware of any Missouri school districts as extreme as SFUSD, and I haven’t heard of any “Grading for Equity” initiatives here. But this episode is a useful reminder that some educators seem to misunderstand what it takes to prepare students for success. Lowering expectations to conceal skill gaps will not help anyone in the long run.

This is also a powerful example of why we need high-quality, comprehensive tests in our public schools. Standardized tests compel schools and districts to confront the reality of student performance. They offer families and the public reliable, externally benchmarked data about what students have—and have not—learned. In an ideal world where we all prioritized student learning, such tests might not be necessary. But in the world we live in, they’re a vital safeguard.

The post Grading for Equity in San Francisco, and What It Means for Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I don’t object to a little downtime as the school year winds down—most parents probably feel the same. But I do mind that the slowdown seems to begin earlier and earlier in the year, stretching into a multi-week period in May when little meaningful academic work takes place. What’s more, students don’t always enjoy it either. Speaking from my own experience, my kids are not exactly clamoring for more assignments, but their disengagement is obvious.

This end-of-year drift is especially frustrating after months of being told how critical school attendance is. If every day in school matters, why is so much time wasted at the end of the year?

In the grand scheme of things, the May Malaise may seem like a minor annoyance. But it also informs a deeper question: What would schools look like without testing? While I don’t believe they would devolve into nonstop parties and movies, this period offers a glimpse into what the school system would look like with less focus on academics and less accountability. It suggests the motivation to improve student achievement isn’t as deeply embedded in the system as we might hope. And to me, it highlights the value of testing.

I know some people see standardized tests as the enemy of good teaching. They argue that tests constrain teachers, forcing them to “teach to the test” instead of inspiring creativity and deeper learning. But I see it differently. I believe testing is one of the most powerful tools we have to keep schools focused on what matters most: teaching core academic skills. I fear that if we stop testing, what little urgency we have for improving academic achievement will be lost.

Even if you think that tests are too distracting for teachers, or too stressful for students (some stress is good for them, I assure you!), just remember May Malaise. It could be worse.

The post “May Malaise” and the Value of Testing in Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If we believe it’s essential for schools to teach core academic skills—like reading and math—then we should support the tools that help us measure those skills. Statewide standardized tests remain our best tool for understanding how much students are learning. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets counted.

However, there is growing opposition to state testing in Missouri on both sides of the political aisle. On the left, the education establishment has long resisted all forms of accountability, and what better way to shut down accountability than to stop measuring how students perform in school? The left has been surprisingly effective in undermining the credibility of state tests, leading many to believe they don’t measure what matters. Standardized tests have been criticized for being too narrow, unobjective, and even racist. (I wish I were exaggerating on the last point, but I am not.) At the university level, we saw a brief movement to eliminate SAT and ACT requirements—only to see many institutions walk those changes back once they realized these tests provide crucial insight into academic readiness.

Meanwhile, on the right, the opposition to testing is relatively new. Not long ago, political conservatives were strong advocates for test-based accountability. No Child Left Behind, the largest test-based accountability policy in U.S. history, was ushered in under George W. Bush in the early 2000s. But today, it seems that testing has been swept up in a general push to shrink government and localize decision-making. In Missouri, testing is viewed as part of the state’s top-down policy agenda and a threat to local control.

This left-right alliance is playing out now in Jefferson City. Senate Bill 360, which would dismantle uniform statewide testing and accountability in Missouri, is sponsored by Republican Senator Jill Carter and supported by the National Education Association, a group typically aligned with the left.

All of this is unfortunate, because the truth is we need state standardized tests. The Missouri tests are not what many have been led to believe. They are objective, they are not racially biased, and they are not political. They are not concoctions brewed up in the back room of state government—rather, they are developed by independent experts, grounded in years of research, and focused almost entirely on reading and math.

Without statewide testing, we risk replacing hard data with empty assurances. School districts will insist students are learning—they’re doing exceptionally well, in fact!—and we’ll have no choice but to trust them.

An extreme policy would be to end testing entirely, but an equally damaging policy would be to abandon a common state test and allow school districts to use their own tests. This sounds appealing to local-control advocates, and in fact is the proposal on the table in SB360. But if this were to happen, it would be impossible to compare outcomes across districts, leaving us in the same place as if we had no testing at all.

If you’re unhappy with the direction schools are heading, just wait until we don’t have state tests—and the hard data provided by the tests—to keep them in line.

The post The Testing Bogeyman Is Alive and Well in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Governor Kehoe has appointed four new members to the Missouri State Board of Education, including two who will, if confirmed, replace the president and vice-president. Given that the current president, Charlie Shields, has held the position for a decade and his term expired five years ago, I would say it’s about time. Hopefully these new members will bring new energy and fortitude as they tackle a challenging to-do list.

First, there is the glaring issue of (a lack of) accountability. Currently, Missouri school districts are held accountable through the Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP) 6. According to the standards set by this plan, like those in versions 1 through 5 before it, all but six of Missouri’s 520 school districts receive the state’s seal of approval, also known as full accreditation. It defies logic that a district like St. Louis Public Schools, with its numerous academic and financial problems, could be fully accredited. Part of the reason is that when the board switched from using MSIP 5 to MSIP 6 in 2024, it determined that the MSIP 6 results for a single school year were not reliable enough to justify changing any district’s accreditation status. Rather, the board decided to use a three-year rolling average to make that determination, meaning that accreditation decisions will need to wait until 2027. The new Board needs to recognize this for the nonsense that it is, and it needs to create a meaningful accountability system.

Second, the new Board should get fully behind the governor’s effort to revise the Foundation Formula, which distributes most state education dollars to districts. The existing formula is over 20 years old, and at least one-third of our districts don’t even use it. Instead, those districts are “held harmless” and given the amount they received in 2005, regardless of any changes in enrollment or property values. The board, as stewards of billions of dollars in public funding, should insist on a new formula that is highly targeted to student need, is transparent, and allows funding to follow a student to the school of their choice. Ironically, the same MSIP 6 that can’t be trusted to measure student achievement has been deemed perfectly reliable when the board requests that the legislature raise the formula’s base funding amount per student. Which is it?

Third, the Board’s job is to hold schools and districts accountable for their performance, not to hide or apologize for failure. Currently, students who have mastered grade-level content and are ready for the next grade are classified as “Proficient.” In other words, they’re where they should be. But a bill currently under consideration in the Missouri Legislature would add a classification called “Grade Level.” If you didn’t know better, you might think that meant something very similar to “proficient,” but it would actually describe students who may be on grade level. What purpose could this new classification have, other than to provide false reassurance to parents whose children are falling behind? The Board should resist any attempts to water down results.

Finally, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has a website that is notoriously difficult to use. One of DESE’s main jobs is to disseminate information and data on our 2,500 schools and the 850,000 students who attend them. If Missouri were to allow students to choose a public school other than their assigned one, DESE would need a functioning website to track those students. If the Foundation Formula is revised, taxpayers deserve to be able to easily track public funds as they follow students. The Board should prioritize the building of a user-friendly and comprehensive website with easy-to-find, accessible, and transparent data.

Last year, four in ten Missouri 4th-graders tested in English/Language Arts couldn’t read. This fall they will move to middle school, and one can only imagine the difficulty they’ll be having when they can’t read their textbooks. DESE used to publish the percentage of high school graduates who were deemed either college- or career-ready by DESE standards. The percentage for the last year I could find (2017) was 42 percent. My own calculations from last year put the number at around 62 percent. When fewer than half of our young students can read on grade level and only about half of our graduating seniors are prepared for what’s next, we are in an educational crisis.

Being appointed to the State Board of Education is an honor, but it comes with responsibilities. We want board members to know the truth about how Missouri schools and students are faring, and we want them to tell us the truth about it. We want them to have a plan to fix what’s broken. That may include a performance audit of DESE to make sure the agency is functioning at the highest possible level. It may include working to expand rather than restrict parents’ choices for the education of their children. It also should include requesting the appropriate amount of state funds for their budget, rather than reflexively asking for more money each year. Time will tell which direction this new board takes, but one thing is crystal clear: It can’t be business as usual.

The post New State Board of Education Has a Long To-Do List appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri lawmakers are considering a change to the performance levels the state uses to categorize students based on end-of-year test scores. Currently, Missouri categorizes students into one of four performance levels. From lowest to highest, these are: (1) below basic, (2) basic, (3) proficient, and (4) advanced. I believe the meaning of these categories is self-evident, as it should be.

A proposed change in House Bill 607 would add a fifth performance level, called “grade level,” which would fall below the “proficient” category and above the “basic” category.

Wait, what? What does testing at a “proficient” level mean, if not testing at “grade level?” And how can a student test at grade level but not be proficient? Digging a little deeper, the bill defines a student as “proficient” if the student can: “Demonstrate mastery over all appropriate grade-level standards and has introductory-level knowledge for the next grade or level of education.” When I think of what the word “proficient” is intended to communicate, this sounds about right.

But what, then, does the new “grade level” category mean? According to the bill, it also means that the student: “Demonstrates mastery over appropriate grade-level subject matter.” However, it goes onto indicate that a grade level student: “May be ready, with appropriate reinforcement, for the next grade or level of education.” This means that a student could be classified as testing at grade level on end-of-year assessments, even if he or she is not fully ready for the next grade. This does not sound like “grade level” performance to me, and I suspect many Missourians would agree.

This matters for two reasons. First, in case you haven’t been paying attention to national education headlines recently, student learning has been declining for about a decade now, and the decline has accelerated since the COVID pandemic. Missouri is no exception to the national trend. In the face of disappointing academic outcomes, it is important to maintain clear and rigorous standards. We should continue to demand the best from Missouri children. This watered-down version of “grade level” performance seems like a step in the wrong direction, like an implicit acceptance of the fact that our children are learning less in school than their counterparts from a decade ago.

Second, consider when schools and districts report out to the public on student performance. With this new category, they’ll be able to report on the share of students who are performing at “grade level” or higher, but this will not mean what most people will think it means. If I hadn’t read the language of the bill myself, I certainly would not understand it. The definition of “grade level” in the bill, as quoted above, is more appropriately communicated by the term “basic,” which is already a performance category. I want our schools to report on student performance in a transparent manner, rather than obfuscating it.

At first glance, how the state chooses to report out on student test performance may not seem like a big deal. But the more I think about it, the more this bothers me. I cannot think of a single positive rationale for doing this. It is certainly not aspirational. I don’t think it is a stretch to call it dishonest.

I hope the lawmakers in Jefferson City reject this change in the interest of maintaining high standards for our children, and promoting transparency in Missouri government.

The post Legislating Lower Standards for Missouri’s Children? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This is problematic because grades tend to carry more weight with students and parents than test scores. Many parents assume that the grades their children receive are accurate indicators of academic progress.

But this assumption is increasingly incorrect. Grades have become more and more disconnected from actual achievement. This may help explain why 90 percent of parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level in reading and math, even though only about one third of 4th- and 8th-grade students in the United States score at a proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Who is to blame for the widening honesty gap? I believe we all bear responsibility. We seem to have collectively lost our appetite for bad news. Parents don’t want to hear that their children are falling behind, and schools are reluctant to deliver that message. Meanwhile, states face little pushback when they lower testing standards and inflate proficiency rates.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the cognitive skills students learn in school really matter for later-life success, and glossing over declining test scores—our best measures of these skills—will not change this fundamental fact. Sending our children to school and pretending that they are learning is not a path to prosperity. It is a path to lower economic growth and a lower quality of life. We should demand high standards from our educational institutions, even if the truth hurts.

The post The Honesty Gap in Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I’m often asked if school choice is an effective policy. In other words—do states that let parents easily choose from a number of publicly funded options for their children do better than those that don’t? We need NAEP to know the answer. Also, folks want to know if Missouri is improving or getting worse when it comes to educating our students. Well, the state has changed its own test several times in the last decade, so the only way we can know is to look at NAEP scores.

It’s difficult to achieve accountability in a vacuum. Gutting something in the name of cutting costs can be costly in itself. Missourians should hope that NAEP, federal education data collection, and the federal role in researching what works in education get rebuilt quickly and thoughtfully.

The post Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater appeared first on Show-Me Institute.