Does your kid attend an A school or B school? New report cards will show grades | Williams
Finally, it seems Kansas City parents may get a better understanding of whether their child’s school is doing a good job or not. And public schools — especially those in Kansas City — can get more credit for improving student performance even if students aren’t hitting the basic standards yet.
As a former education writer, I was happy to attend a review this week of Missouri’s proposed school accountability report card program and learned that the first letter-grade school assessment system is scheduled for release by April 2027.
In the meantime, local education-focused groups such as BLAQUE KC — a nonprofit dedicated to improving the academic, economic and social outcomes for Black students — are working to get school and community leaders and parents ready to dissect these report cards as a standardized, easy-to-understand grading system for public schools and districts.
“It is a response to so many community members and parents who have been saying we want an easy way to assess for ourselves if this is a school that is high performing or low performing, as we make decisions about where to place our child,” Cokethea Hill-Woodard, founder and CEO at BLAQUE, told a gathering of school leaders and community members Tuesday at the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
Grading schools
We all know what it means to be an A student, a B student and so on. We know that a D is not so good and an F means, “You failed — do better.”
So don’t you think it makes sense that when the state measures school and district performance, the final grade should be a letter grade we all understand and are used to seeing?
The statewide letter grading system was initiated by Gov. Mike Kehoe, who signed Executive Order 26-01 at the end of January. The order directed the state education department to create and publish annual letter-grade report cards measuring public schools, including charters.
Governor, I don’t agree with some of what you do, but assigning letter grades to schools is a great idea.
Just because districts get a letter grade doesn’t mean As and Bs completely replace the old state standardized testing and scoring assessment program Missouri has used since 1997, better known as MAP. Instead, the test scores will become a part of how schools are evaluated.
Schools will get grades for student performance in English language arts, math and science. At the high school level, schools would be graded on graduation rates and student readiness for college or career. Schools will be scored overall on a 100-point scale.
The plan evaluates districts and schools using test scores, graduation rates and college-readiness exams.
Spending millions on program
Getting the program in place would cost $1.2 million in the first year and $715,000 each year after that.
While some educators have said that money could be better spent in the classroom, I think it’s worth investing in the new grading program to ensure parents get a clear picture of how well schools are educating children.
“The goal for the A–F school grading framework is to provide families and communities with a simple, comparable, and rigorous picture of school performance,” said the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Interim Commissioner of Education Dr. Stacey Preis.
Hill-Woodard is excited about the report cards, she said, “because this is a transparency deal. It’s a way for us to look across Missouri and see how schools are performing.” And, she hopes that having this simple grading available will help foster collaboration between schools, districts, parents and the community — the whole village.
I know schools probably don’t want to be labeled as a C or a D school, or worse. When I was in school, I never wanted to get a C or a D, either. So, I did what I had to do to make sure I got an A or a B, and I was always shooting for the A.
Schools and districts will have to do the same. And having the grades made simple for parents to understand means they will most likely hold schools accountable for raising the school’s grade.
And what’s to stop a school with a C from asking a school with an A how they did it, and for help raising their grade for the next report card cycle? Nothing.
The Missouri education department has sent its plan on the rollout of the new grading program to the governor’s office for review. The plan remains subject to change based on any revisions requested during the review process.
“It’s not going to be perfect,” right away, said Hill-Woodard. “This is just the first rollout.” But like Hill-Woodard, parents and the entire education community must stay focused and be diligent about getting the process right. Because all Missouri kids deserve to know they attend an A school where they can be an A student.
