This year St. Charles High School’s Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) score improved drastically from last year. The school earned 105 points. This is a 27.5 point increase from last school year. SCHS gained 14 points for success-ready students, and earned points for student growth in ELA, math, social studies, and science classes. Currently, the school has 0 out of 4 points possible for attendance because of its current attendance rate, which is around 70 percent.
The MSIP is used by the department of elementary and secondary education to accredit school districts in Missouri. Each school and school district receives an annual performance report (APR). This measures the progress of students in schools and school districts. The annual progress report is separated into two sections: performance metrics that measure student outcomes, and continuous improvement metrics which evaluate the quality of the work of the school and or school district towards improving the opportunities given to students. Each school’s annual yearly progress (AYP) is tracked and based off of the school’s scores on state assessments like the EOC, student attendance, tests like the ACT and WorkKeys, and how well students do in their AP and dual-enrollment classes. The highest score a school can achieve is 140 points.
A school’s APR score is used by the department of elementary and secondary education to inform them of their accreditation and classification. Currently St. Charles High School and the St. Charles School District are both fully accredited. Dr. Jason Sefrit, the superintendent, said this is a big deal for support, local board control and funding. If our school’s score was too low, students would still earn their diplomas, but our school would be unaccredited from Missouri’s standpoint.
“We always want to be what is viewed as by the state an accredited school meaning that we give you guys a good education, one that allows you to go either work or a college career path, whatever you want,” Principal Dr. Ted Happel said. He said that the school’s goal is to always try and achieve the highest score possible because it gives us good status in the community, the state, and overall.
Dr. Sefrit attributed the increase to work that staff members are doing.
“The district/school administrative staff have become more systematic and strategic in our process of attaining the most points possible under continuous improvement. SCHS and Success staff and students are doing great work in growing our performance/Achievement.”
School scores obviously vary each year as there are always new groups of students that come in each school year.
“You never know if you’re going to get the same results because the students may have more academic achievement in one grade or class from the next class, so that’s why you can’t really control that,” Happel said. “So we just have to do everything we can to give make sure that we’re working with you guys to give you the skills you need to be successful.”
Every year the teachers at St. Charles High work very hard to make sure students are as prepared as possible for all of the testing and classes they participate in. The instructional coaches at our school, Leslie Teague and Andrew Russell determine what to focus on based on our school’s data. Dr. Happel shared that the teachers were shown where our school was last year and he didn’t believe it was an accurate representation of what we could achieve. After seeing this, the teachers put strong emphasis on helping students learn the skills they need to be successful.
Science teacher Hannah Robinson helps her students prepare for test like the EOC’s in many ways.
“One of the ways that we help our students prepare for the EOC is by building our tests in a manner that is structured like the EOC,” she said. “So we actually get students familiarized with the styles of questions and then giving them opportunities to do corrections with the help of a teacher so that they can better understand those questions and the strategies that they need to answer those questions in the future.”
