The Wright City R-II School District made some strides and identified some areas of improvement in its most recent test assessment results. 

A recent report of Missouri Assessment Program and End of Course Assessments tests showed Wright City R-II School District had its best performing year since 2014. Two district buildings were noted as having excellent performance. District leaders attributed the improvements to 2019 changes that included forming an Impact team, focusing on the district assessment plan and more focused instructional leadership meetings. 

For areas of improvement, Wright City’s seventh graders had results below the state average in both English language arts and math. However, eighth graders showed high rates of growth over their results as seventh graders the year before. 

“We’re always having that dip in seventh grade and then the kids are having to recover from there on out,” board President Austin Jones said. “From a school district perspective, that’s what I’m seeing right there in all these slides. Seventh grade was the time the kids bottomed out.”

Assistant Superintendent Doug Smith said this was an observation district personnel also had. The middle school is focused on making sure the district impact teams are functioning and looking at the student data. Middle school staff are also working to implement the assessment plan previously created, Smith said. 

The discussion of data led to an examination of what types of benchmarks the district is using to assess learning throughout the year. Jones said this might be a good example where competency based learning may help the students. 

Smith stressed the progress the elementary schools have made by using evidence based learning. 

“We know that East and West elementary have been evidence based in their systems,” Smith said. “And we’ve seen really excellent performance there and then some upticks.”

The school board will get another district report within the next two months. The report will focus on comparing the progress of the Wright City R-II School District to other districts in the area and within their conference. 

“The second report that we’ll bring back to you in 30-60 days will really get down to a more celebratory report that will show the focus,” Superintendent Chris Berger said. “The focus of it will be how we compete with regional schools and how we do within our conference. We’ve looked at that data in the past. We haven’t been very happy with that data. I think the report that’s forthcoming will be much more pleasing.”