Lee’s Summit schools part of pilot program that could waive MO state testing for 3 years
The Lee’s Summit R-7 School District is one of 20 schools across Missouri that will participate in a pilot program to test alternative forms of student assessment outside of current required state exams, the district announced last week.
As part of the Success Ready Students Network, Lee’s Summit students won’t take Missouri Assessment Program tests for three years while the district pilots new programs to more effectively track students’ progress. The Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education helped create the program that was presented to the state board last week.
Current state testing assesses students towards the end of the school year, and scores and data are only available to parents and teachers in the summer or fall, when most students have already moved on to the next grade level, said Christy Barger, associate superintendent of academic services for the Lee’s Summit school district.
Through the pilot, Barger said Lee’s Summit administrators hope to provide real-time assessments throughout the school year to help students reach state competency standards by the summer.
Lee’s Summit plans to administer a nationally normed test three times a year. Students in Lee’s Summit already take the assessment, but if the state board approves it in August, the district can use the exam as their main accountability system during the pilot program.
The test takes between three and five hours to complete, and within 24 hours, teachers see the results that they can use to adjust lesson plans and meet individual student needs, Barger said. Results will also provide markers showing how Lee’s Summit students scored compared to other students in the state and nationally.
Barger said their hope across the 20 districts is to determine a way to measure student success that would be more meaningful for teachers, students and parents.
“Parents can have a very real-time sense of where their student is in October of third grade, as opposed to having to wait till the student is a quarter of the way through fourth grade to find out how they did on their third grade standard,” she said.
The pilot, Barger said, will also have a focus on real-world learning, with students having more opportunities to connect classroom lessons and goals with experiences like internships and externships. She said the program will allow the district to help students meet state standards while also readying students for life beyond high school.
The state board of education will vote on the standardized testing waiver in August. If approved, the pilot program will begin in the fall and continue through the 2025-2026 school year.
