Before the pandemic, Missouri had only three provisionally accredited and three unaccredited districts. Now, more than 100 scored low enough to be classified as provisionally accredited, though their status will remain unchanged this year.

By Annelise Hanshaw, The Missouri Independent

Missouri students did worse across the board on the latest round of standardized testing released Tuesday, with 112 districts and charter schools scoring low enough to be classified as provisionally accredited.

But the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, or DESE, said it would not downgrade any districts this year because it is the first of a new testing program.

DESE released public school districts’ and charter schools’ Annual Performance Report scores to the public Tuesday afternoon, showing student performance dipping dramatically from pre-pandemic reports.

At the time of the last complete report in 2018, three districts were provisionally accredited and three were unaccredited. All were confined to the state’s urban core in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Provisionally accredited school districts are subject to state monitoring, and unaccredited districts, in some instances, are taken over by the state.

Now, schools scoring below fully accredited status span the entire state.

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