School district says its closer to provisional accreditation

The Kansas City School District is celebrating – with caution – its most recent test scores.

The district has been unaccredited since early 2012 and is facing a deadline to reach provisional accreditation or state takeover.

“Preliminary testing and student performance data returns from 2012-2013 school year show that the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) is positioning itself to regain provisional accreditation as early as fall 2013,” the district says in a press release.

The district says end-of-course exam results for high school students and continued achievement in college and career readiness were both areas of improvement. It also expects to see increases in student achievement for students in grades 3-11, although those results are not yet available.

“The KCPS team is very encouraged by these preliminary results, but we are far from satisfied. Much work remains to be done to continue increasing student achievement,” said Superintendent Dr. R. Stephen Green. “The early returns look promising and we still need to receive the final data, but we appear close to qualifying for our short-term goal of provisional accreditation.”

KCPS offered the following reasons it thinks it will qualify for provisional accreditation:

• The school system has earned 38.5 APR points to-date, a 10.5 point increase from its initial MSIP 5 score. The increase occurred after KCPS submitted revised data to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that supported its claims of improved performance.
• Secondary school assessments show increased student performance in four of the five end-of-course exams administered to high school students this spring. The growth occurred in the algebra 1, biology, English 2 and government exams.
• The school system expects to meet its performance standards in college and career readiness, an area of accreditation in which it continues to experience strong outcomes.

“As a community, we must use these strong gains as a stepping stone. They cannot be seen as a finish line,” Green said. “We will be relentless in our persistence toward increasing student achievement. These results show we are on the way to that outcome.”