Florissant Area School Districts Improve on State Exams

With students preparing to head back to schools in the next couple of weeks, Florissant school districts recently got a rude awakening in preparing students for the 2012 Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests.

Although and school districts improved on this year’s MAP tests, both still failed to meet the state’s goal in results released on Thursday.

Each year, students in third through eighth grades take the MAP tests in communication arts and mathematics during the spring. The tests aid in fulfilling the No Child Left Behind requirements, which stipulates that 100 percent of students perform at grade level achievement by 2014.

This year, the state set goals of proficiency for communication arts and math at 75.5 and 72.5 percent, respectively.

Below shows how the districts fared in the MAP tests this year compared to the goals as well as past years:

*The Annual Proficiency Target for communication arts is the percentage of students expected to score proficient or advanced on the state test in a given year.

**The Annual Proficiency Target for math is the percentage of students expected to score proficient or advanced on the state test in a given year.

As the 2014 benchmark looms, districts have shown struggles in keeping up with the rising pace. This year, nearly 75 percent of districts failed to meet the benchmark. Furthermore, 92 of 557 districts met the achievement benchmark for math and reading.

Despite failing to meet the state benchmarks, each district did improve on previous years’ scores.

Hazelwood School District assistant superintendent of communications Diana Gulotta said that the district is pleased with the progress but realizes there’s a lot of work to be done.

“We realize more work needs to be done to improve achievement,” she said. “We are hopeful that through the district reorganization plan, we’ll see more progress in a short amount of time.”

Gulotta said that the reorganization plan involves pushing professional development; leadership, support and resources back to the school level and making the district less top heavy. The plan would enable those who work with students at the school level to better plan and suit students’ needs.

Messages to the Ferguson-Florissant School District had not been returned at time of publication.