KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A special emergency session board meeting has been called for Sunday night by the Hickman Mills C-1 School District.
The 8 p.m. meeting will discuss the State Board of Education’s proposed changes to the Missouri School Improvement Program 6 (MSIP 6).
Hickman Mills Superintendent Yaw Obeng “stands in firm opposition” to a couple of the proposed changes, according to a district news release.
First, Obeng explained his issue with the recommendation to use three years of data to identify a new composite score, meaning districts would be reclassified in 2025-2026 rather than in 2024.
Obeng believes the decision would allow “no provision for districts like HMC-1 that have demonstrated continuous improvement with no pathway to receive full accreditation as articulated in the original MSIP 6 plan.”
Thus, Obeng said the change “may not adequately reflect the district’s performance and could unfairly impact its accreditation status.”
The second issue he touched on was the board’s proposition to shift from utilizing data on the current year’s graduates to the previous year’s cohort to measure student success.
“Who is being served in this scenario?” Obeng questioned.
Obeng said not using current data could “inaccurately represent the district’s progress and impede its ability to track student success effectively.”
Ultimately, Obeng hopes the state board will consider adopting the Alternative Accreditation for Provisionally Accredited Schools, which is similar to the approach that granted full accreditation to Kansas City Public Schools.
The district has “demonstrated consistent growth across performance areas and improvement standards,” so it “should be afforded the same recognition and opportunities for accreditation as the Kansas City Public Schools," Obeng emphasized in the news release.
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