The Missouri State Board of Education adopts common core standards as a requirement to apply for Race to the Top funds, allocated under No Child Left Behind.

Lindbergh Schools celebrated five years as the No. 1 ranked K-12 school district in Missouri. Specifically, Lindbergh was the highest-ranked district in combined Math and English Language Arts proficiency for the fifth year in a row, among Missouri’s 583 public K-12 districts. This was according to student achievement data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Also in 2014, Lindbergh High School’s combined math and ELA scores ranked highest among Missouri high schools, Truman ranked No. 2 among middle schools, and Concord and Long ranked No. 3 and No. 4 among all elementary schools, respectively. Every single Lindbergh school ranked in the top 20 when compared with other Missouri schools with the same grade levels.

While this accomplishment is something we can be proud of, it is equally important to note that Lindbergh, like many other districts at the time, was following a model that prioritized “teaching to the test.” This model focused very specifically on preparing students to take the MAP test each year, taking valuable instructional time away from personalized learning and a focus on individual student growth.

All Missouri students took a new assessment developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a standardized test consortium that created Common Core State Standards-aligned tests.

This brand new test had no practice test available, and as a result, districts could no longer “teach to the test” like they had in the past. This evened the playing field statewide, and the result was a leveling out of rankings, especially among high-performing districts, which performed comparably to one another.

The Missouri General Assembly passed House Bill No. 1490, which required the state to develop its own academic standards (Missouri Learning Standards) and an assessment aligned to these standards.

The new Missouri Learning Standards are implemented to replace the Common Core State Standards.

The state test changed again, in order to bridge the gap from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium testing to Missouri’s new MAP assessment.

For the first time since 2014, Lindbergh and other districts statewide once again had state assessment data that could be compared to previous years.

The state again developed new standards for English Language Arts, Math and Science, eliminating the ability to compare student progress from previous years. This change was based on the implementation of the Missouri Learning Standards.

Dr. Tony Lake, the district's new superintendent, introduced his Listening and Learning Tour and asked the Lindbergh community for feedback regarding how we measure student success.

In all, 668 community members ranked the following success measures:

• ACT scores
• Student mastery of 4 C’s (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity)
• Student attendance rate
• State reading and math scores
• Personalized learning for staff and students
• Student satisfaction
• Parent satisfaction
• High-quality teachers
• Graduation rate
• Entrance rate into postsecondary programs
• Employment rate for students following graduation
• Social and emotional well-being of our students and staff

The top-five measures, ranked by families, teachers, students and community members were:

1. High-quality teachers
2. Social and emotional well-being of students and staff
3. Student mastery of 4 C’s (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity)
4. Personalized learning for staff and students
5. Student satisfaction

FastBridge was introduced districtwide to assess elementary school student growth in reading.

The district developed a five-year strategic plan and an annual District Goals Report with measurable goals to support the top-five success measures that were identified by families, teachers, students and community members. These success measures included:

1. High-quality teachers
2. Social and emotional well-being of students and staff
3. Student mastery of 4 C's (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity)
4. Personalized learning for staff and students
5. Student satisfaction

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no state assessments were administered during the 2019-20 school year.

In Lindbergh, only about 80% of students participated in the MAP test. This participation rate did not meet DESE’s minimum requirement because messaging to Lindbergh families was that the assessment was not necessary.

In addition, students participating in virtual learning had to complete the MAP during a scheduled timeframe and in person. For these reasons, several families chose not to participate, while some students who did participate did not have enough time in their scheduled window to complete the assessment.

The 2020-21 MAP results cannot be viewed in the same way as previous years, due to both the specific ways in which Lindbergh deprioritized the test compared to other districts and the circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic that drastically affected student learning.

On a statewide level, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has officially advised school districts and individuals not to use the 2020-21 results “to make certain high-stakes decisions, to interpret test scores in the same way as in previous years, or without considering the learning environment and other contextual factors.”

As our country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Lindbergh Schools is once again prioritizing student data to measure individual student growth and provide appropriate interventions to help each student succeed.

In addition, Dr. Jill Lawson, executive director of assessment and student services, is serving on the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s new Success-Ready Students Work Group, which is being formed to develop learning and assessments that support every student in being college, career and workplace ready.

This work reinforces Lindbergh’s own journey, which began in the 2017-18 school year, and is designed to implement more meaningful ways to measure student growth.

This group is studying Competency-Based Learning, a model that centers on instruction that meets the individual needs of students, where students advance based on mastery of standards, and not simply time spent at school.

The group will also work to redesign the state’s current assessment to better support students, educators and inform families about each student’s individual learning progress.