Recently, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released its Annual Performance Review, or APR, for the 2024-25 school year for each of the state’s school districts.

While both Wright City R-II and Warren County R-III produced strong marks, each district’s personnel felt they could always be better.

At the November board meeting, Wright City Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Dr. Holly Broadway-Yates detailed DESE’s findings for the R-II district during the 2024-25 school year.

According to Broadway-Yates, the district scored 69.7 percent in the report, earning 139.5 points out of the 200 possible, as districts are graded on performance and continuous improvement.

“There are lots of things to celebrate,” Broadway-Yates said. “We still have work to do.”

One area where the district shone was in attendance points, as R-II earned them on the report for the first time.

It was a singular outstanding achievement among many, Superintendent Dr. Amy Salvo said.

“I am incredibly proud of our buildings for the hard work they put into improving attendance,” Salvo said. “Seeing East and West Elementary earn attendance points on our APR is a powerful reflection of our mission and last year’s focus of ‘Every Student, Every Day.’ This achievement demonstrates what is possible when families, staff and students come together with a shared purpose. I would also like to highlight and recognize West Elementary for their APR increase of more than 27%. This is an outstanding accomplishment and a testament to their dedication."

Among the other highlights of the report was the district scoring above the state average in fourth- and eighth-grade ELA, third-, fourth-, and eighth-grade math, and eighth-grade science.

Salvo said that the district has begun a series of action steps to help improve the APR score in both the immediate and long-term future.

“Our kids are our kids and they’re more than a score,” Salvo said. “We’re doing some great work and we wanted to share that publicly. We’re not just throwing darts (hoping for improvement). We’re throwing darts in the right areas.”

Salvo said that among the action steps being taken were a research-based new teacher evaluation model, a focus on improving attendance and school safety and culture, adding a middle school reading interventionist, an ESL reading interventionist, a middle school PE teacher, a summer school reading interventionist and increased teacher support districtwide.

In the Warren County R-III district, Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith told the assembled board at its November meeting that, while the APR numbers are down from last year, they still show an upward trend.

“These are the things we’re working on to try to get better scores,” Klinginsmith said. “Our 70.5 (score) this year is down from 78.2 last year. The number is up from 2023 and still up even more from 2022.”

Klinginsmith added that the review looks for student performance and continuous improvement. A fundamental part of the performance lies in students simply being at school to learn.

“We get almost all the points (scored) on continuous improvement,” Klinginsmith said. “The one thing we don’t get all points on is attendance. Performance is student achievement, and that’s where we struggle.

“There are nine percent of the districts in the state that did not get attendance points and that is us,” Klinginsmith added. “We’re in the bottom 10 percent, and we’ve got to improve on that, as attendance really is the strongest correlation to academic achievement. We need kids to be here when they’re supposed to be here. This has been a challenge for us for a long, long time. I am hopeful that next year, when suspension counts for attendance points, we’ll get those.”

Klinginsmith added that the district’s Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) scores are down from last year. The district ranks 335th out of 516 statewide districts, down from 288 in 2024.

The superintendent said that scores diminished for older age groups. “We kind of see a drop-off in middle school, which is one of the reasons for growth scores being down,” Klinginsmith said. “We do really well in elementary.”

The superintendent said that the high school English II scores were down from the previous year. He added that making a series of changes, including revamping the middle school English language arts program, is a top priority for improving overall results.

“Hopefully that was just a one-year, one-off,” Klinginsmith said. “(The goal is to be) back on track next year. Algebra is up and Algebra II is really high, above the state (average). Great job. We’re going to look at (ELA) and put our energy there. After that, we’ll look at math. When you talk about the APR, middle school is where you have to win to score points.”

Next, Klinginsmith spoke about growth scores – how the report assesses students’ overall improvement or regression from year to year.

In math, 79 percent of students met growth goals; in ELA, 82 percent did.

“The way I interpret this is that we’re a district that has decent growth but not great,” Klinginsmith said.