Each year, the Warren County R-III School Board is presented with an update on the state of the district’s various assessment programs.

At the board’s August meeting, Jeanna Dildine, in her third year as District Assessment Coordinator, gave the board her annual briefing on the district’s assessment programs.

“Each year is a little different when it comes to assessment,” Dildine said. “But we’re doing well as a district.”

Dildine told the board that the district’s assessment goals were to develop common assessments focused on content areas, with curriculum teams meeting last year.

“Last year, it was ELA and Library Media Specialists,” Dildine said. “With the purchase of the new ELA (English Language Arts) curriculum, we had assessments that aligned with that. We worked on that so our desegregated reports from Canvas would be accurate. We followed the laws and regulations set forth by DESE.”

The goals of the assessments, such as STAR tests or End of Course (EOC) exams are for: teachers to gain information about individual students’ strengths and weaknesses; teachers to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of their instruction; students to be made aware of the skills in a variety of areas; teachers, parents, students and policy makers to make more informed decisions; programs can be evaluated for their impact on learning; and school buildings and the district can report on academic progress.

Dildine added that a goal this school year is to continue to implement the STAR reading assessment in compliance with Missouri Senate Bill 681.

“We did,” Dildine said. “We’re moving right along with that.”

She added that the district used the instructional testlets DESE releases to prepare students for state testing.

Dildine noted a huge increase in usage from the year prior, when the testlets were first created.

“Last year, we had a lot of interest in those from teachers, which, hopefully, helped our students to do their best,” Dildine said. “The district literacy plan was also created to follow those assessment guidelines with the Missouri ‘Read, Lead, Exceed’ initiative and its collaborative work. This is what we do with our STAR assessment to make sure our elementary kids get tested so that we follow the law from DESE.”

Dildine said that the expectations for the assessment program for the 2026-27 school year are the same as in previous years.

The district will build on the foundation established by the testing standards from previous years.

“The goals for this school year (are) to continue to work on common assessments,” Dildine said. “Especially focusing on English Language Arts with the new curriculum that they purchased. To continue to ensure we have the best assessments so we can better instruct our kids toward mastery of those standards and follow the laws and regulations, as always. This all follows with CSIP goal No. 2.”

The district’s stated CSIP goal No. 2 is: Warren County R-III School District will increase and maintain 75 percent of all students in grades kindergarten through eight reading on or above grade level or have achieved one year’s worth of reading growth per year, over the CSIP cycle.

The assessment plan needs to be brought before the board for yearly approval.

The plan for the 2026-27 school year passed unanimously.