Bourisaw or Bust?

In an issue released Tuesday, St. Louis Schools Watch encouraged parents to support the new superintendent, Diana Bourisaw, as she took on the challenges of the new school year. The new super holds the helm as the district began a new school year under the cloud of potential state intervention due to falling test scores.

The article highlighted statements from Missouri Education Commissioner Kent King. King urged readers and parents to allow the new administration time to work, while at the same time floated the possibility that the district may lose its accreditation this fall.

The SLSW article criticized the brief tenure of Creg Williams, saying that district achievement dropped precipitously under his care. The article cites figures contrasting the Missouri Assessment Program test scores from 2006 with previous years.

Although King has said that according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) there has been little to no progress, DESE has said that scores from the 2006 test can not be compared with previous MAP scores. DESE spokesman Jim Morris said that not only has number of categories dropped from five (step 1, progressing, near proficient, proficient and advanced) to four (below basic, basic, proficient and advanced), but also the definitions have changed as well.

According to Morris, the definitions have been broadened. In Missouri that has generally meant districts have benefited by more students being counted in the higher two categories–proficient and advanced. In St. Louis, however, the opposite has been the case; the one category that has swelled has been the "basic" category.

The piece holds the previous school board–under the watch of a majority of members supported by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay– responsible for allowing the district to land into this predicament.

"On the third grade communication arts test, only 25.8% of students scored proficient or advanced in April 2006, compared to 35.2% the year before. The decline was even sharper on the fourth grade math test: 20.3% of students scored proficient or advanced in April 2006, while 36.1% had attained those levels just one year before."

Yet according to the state's own figures, it is only in the 2005 to 2006 transition that the math and communication arts figures lurch so far down. From 2001 to 2005, proficient and advanced scores for third grade communication arts increased: 17.2%, 20.8%, 22.5%, 30.5%, 35.2%. Other grades generally show overall scores improving or holding; including mathematics.

Contrast that with 2006 where the majority of scores fall in the bottom two categories and grow increasingly bad across the grade span from 3rd to 8th.

The district faces a potential state intervention, yet there is little clear information available for parents and voters.