Missouri Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger speaks at a Saint Louis University PRiME Center conference Thursday on the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Measuring academic progress is becoming increasingly important as Missouri schools recover from pandemic-related learning loss, with researchers and the state’s education officials championing growth as a vital metric.
St. Louis University’s PRiME Center, a nonpartisan education think tank, held a half-day conference on the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia Thursday to dig into how the state calculates academic growth and celebrate high-growth districts.
“We are really interested in schools that are moving kids the most,” PRiME executive director Collin Hitt told reporters. “We want to do better than we are.”
Hitt believes Missouri has the best formula for calculating academic growth, and the data generated by the formula can help the state identify the best teaching practices.
“You would not be able to see the impact (educators) have on students if we didn’t have growth,” he said.
Education Commissioner Karla Eslinger told conference attendees that growth sees beyond standardized test scores.
“We all have standards, and we want all our kids to meet those standards,” she said. “But one of the things we truly have to pay attention to is the progress they are making towards those standards.”
Missouri’s growth model shows educators how much learning their students accomplished in the school year relative to others in the state. A score of zero doesn’t mean a child has not learned anything but instead indicates that their growth was average.
The formula’s architect Eric Parsons, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said growth is a “more equitable” accountability measure than tracking average test scores. Districts with high achievement levels tend to be wealthier, but high growth is seen in all areas of the state and all socioeconomic levels.
When Parsons graphed growth levels against poverty, there was no correlation. Overall achievement, though, largely increased alongside wealth.
Data also showed no correlation between achievement levels and growth scores, meaning that expanding students’ knowledge is as hard for low-achieving schools as it is for high achievers.
Parsons received an influx of questions about the formula following the state’s transition to a new accountability model three years ago. Growth was once a small factor in schools’ report cards but now accounts for a quarter of their scores.
Administrators speaking at the conference said questions have not completely disappeared but are now primarily concerned with how growth scores are translated into the school accountability points system.
“Districts are wondering how (education officials) are applying the growth model, which is obviously a great model, into those growth points because it does cause some confusion,” Gainesville R-5 School District Superintendent Justin Gilmore said during a panel discussion. “We need to dig deeper into how the growth model is being utilized by the department.”
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