State Demographics
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Total Enrollment 910,386
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Schools 2,424
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Economically Disadvantaged Students 51%
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Students with Disabilities 14.4%
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English Language Learners 3.8%
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Students Attending Urban Schools 18.5%
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Students Attending Rural Schools 26.6%
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Graduation Rate 88.3%
Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD). Graduation Rate data are from 2016/17; all other data are from 2017/18.
State Story : March 2020 – April 2021
March 2020
School Closures
Dr. Margie Vandeven, Missouri's appointed Commissioner of Education, was sitting in a meeting on March 11th talking about COVID "what-ifs" when the global pandemic was announced in the meeting. Within two days, the Governor declared a state of emergency and schools were closed.
Initial Decisions and Approach
Summary
- Focused on taking care of the Whole Child as well as LEA and SEA staff.
- Provided social and emotional support.
- Addressed educational access and the Digital Divide.
SEA and LEA Role Delineation
Summary
- The SEA role was to provide support to LEAs, in some cases by removing policy barriers.
- Barrier removal meant reviewing state statute and applying for waivers in some cases.
- A well-structured state system with connected departments helped the state implement a coordinated response.
Supportive Partners or Resources
Summary
- Governor’s office activated a coordinated cross-agency state response.
- Supportive state partners included the state’s school board, educators, state legislators, and business leaders.
- Leaned on other state chiefs as thought partners.
July 2020
School Re-Opening
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education provided LEAs with a health and safety-related guidebook.
Re-opening Approach
Summary
- Emphasized the need to reach every child to ensure they were both safe and learning.
- Acknowledged that LEA leaders were “stretched very thin.”
- Encouraged communities to support their local leaders as they grappled with challenging decisions related to re-opening.
What Comes Next
Next Steps
Summary
- Continue meeting LEA needs now and after the virus is gone.
- Tackle tough issues like assessment, equity, and educational access.
- Provide “grace” through policy adjustments.
- Address budget gaps.
August 2020 – December 2020
Re-Opening Plan Implementation
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, along with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, released re-opening guidelines for schools in early August 2020. The guidelines contained clear virus mitigation strategies but did not include mandates for re-opening. Re-opening decisions were left to local school boards and local jurisdictions.
Status of School Models
Summary
- Many schools began the year "in-person."
- There was widespread concern about student engagement and learning loss.
- Leaders were focused on adjusting to a "new normal."
January 2021
Recover and Rebuild
As Missouri saw progress in virus mitigation, schools continued to make local decisions about in-person learning. Commissioner Vandeven learned about the diverse needs of the state’s 555 LEAs through frequent communication with nine State Supervisors of Instruction. Through those communications, the Commissioner identified a need to focus on the whole child, equity, retaining and supporting teachers, assessment during the pandemic, and the thoughtful investment of relief funds.
Recover and Rebuild Section Two
Priorities (January 2021 – End of Year)
Summary
- Continued focusing on the Whole-Child.
- Examined data to understand impact of digital divide on student engagement.
Recover and Rebuild Section Three
Retaining and Supporting Teachers and Staff
Summary
- Addressed teacher retention and burnout.
- Supported teachers and counselors.
- Protected time for teacher and staff self-care.
Recover and Rebuild Section Four
Rethinking Assessment
Summary
- Planning for a spring assessment.
- Extending testing window to allow schools to offer remote or in-person formats.
- Identifying priority learning standards to maximize instructional time.
- Examining results to understand the relationship of delivery models and technology access to students.
Investing Relief Funds
Summary
- Ramping up COVID-19 testing and vaccines for teachers.
- Addressing classroom spacing requirements.
- Funding PPE and additional cleaning procedures.
- Addressing acceleration of learning.
Recover and Rebuild Section five
Assessment and Accountability
Summary
- Identify key questions you want answered as early as possible to understand what data to collect and analyze.
- Understand that while formal state-level accountability may be suspended during a major disruption like a pandemic, the general public may continue to hold schools accountable for student performance.
April 2021
Planning for Summer and Next Year
Reflecting on In-Person Learning
Summary
- Reopening looked different across Missouri’s 555 local education areas (LEAs) as it is a diverse, local control state. While needs across LEAs varied, safety and well-being were a primary focus for all.
- Vandeven expressed concern about the great social-emotional needs found across the state.
- Even though COVID-19 still exists, Vandeven asserts there is “Light at the end of the tunnel” due to the availability of vaccines.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Two
Identifying Funding Needs
Summary
- Working across multiple stakeholder groups to identify funding needs.
- Focusing on system inequities like Social Emotional Learning (SEL), mental health, broadband access, and strengthening the teacher workforce.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Three
ARP Funds Decision Making
Summary
- Balancing local control with a coordinated effort.
- Ensuring strategic investments while adhering to a short time-frame.
- Distributing non-public school dollars is a new process for all states.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Four
Learning Recovery and Acceleration
Summary
- Focusing on learning acceleration; primarily during the school day.
- Identifying focus standards and considering competency-based learning.
- Capitalizing on what worked well for students over the last year and keeping expectations high.
District Stories : March 2020 – July 2021
In Missouri we spoke with educators across two districts, including a district superintendent, two principals, and a district education specialist. Interviewees were asked to speak candidly about their own experiences and views, which are not necessarily shared by or representative of the schools and districts in which they serve.
March 2020
Schools Close Suddenly
On March 11, Dr. Margie Vandeven, Missouri’s appointed Commissioner of Education, was in a meeting to discuss the implications of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. Two days later, Missouri Governor Mike Parson declared a state of emergency. Dr. Vandeven’s immediate concern was the health and welfare of state education agency (SEA) and local education agency (LEA) employees and students, and she worked to provide guidance and support to LEAs in a local-control state.
Educators described anxiety among teachers and staff in the week leading up to the national emergency declaration and subsequent school closures. Leaders noted that their teachers and staff were often doubly concerned about how the pandemic would reshape not only their classrooms, but also their home lives and their responsibilities as parents.
Priorities
When schools first closed in March 2020, Commissioner Vandeven prioritized students’ and families’ most basic needs. That priority was reflected at the local level, where teachers and leaders had to adapt to help students; often, teaching and learning was second to survival. Many districts focused on distributing food to students and families, designing pickup programs at schools and bus stops.
The pandemic exacerbated existing equity issues, and teachers and leaders struggled to connect with vulnerable students. In several cases, districts were unable to reach some students for 2 to 3 weeks, and in rare cases, for the entire fourth quarter of the school year. One district superintendent conducted more than 80 home visits over the course of a few weeks in an attempt to reestablish contact with students.
Existing inequalities impacted educators’ support of students and their focus on teaching and learning. Educators we spoke with described the additional challenges and barriers students from low-income backgrounds faced in the move to remote learning. They observed that these students were more likely to need to manage childcare responsibilities—like taking care of siblings—when their own caregivers were essential workers.
Teaching and Learning
Remote learning presented teachers with new demands and challenges they would need to navigate. This included daily interactions with students, but educators also needed to find new ways to collaborate with colleagues, support each other from afar, and partner with caregivers to maximize student engagement. Just as Commissioner Vandeven described the need to “reimagine” teaching and learning in spite of a difficult situation, educators noted both the sheer size of the task and the need—and opportunity—for a reinvention of the system.
Successes
At both the state and local levels, interviewees noted the importance of community partnerships in helping to meet student and family needs in an uncertain time. In coordinating their pandemic response, Commissioner Vandeven and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education worked with business leaders and advisory committees of teachers and district superintendents—an approach that allowed state officials to get direct feedback from community members and take a more localized approach in different regions of the state.
Districts and schools similarly leveraged existing community partnerships—or created new ones—to support students and their families. One district superintendent shared her community’s positive experience with local faith-based organizations and farms who pitched in to provide and distribute food to families in need during the crisis. One school created a community partnership committee to promote connections to the school, share resources, and promote academic engagement for students.
Challenges
The educators we spoke with said they felt that engaging and supporting students and families was more critical than academic instruction. In a similar vein, school leaders said they needed to focus on the social and emotional needs of their own teachers and staff before they could think about tackling pedagogy issues.
July 2020
Looking Ahead to a New School Year
The pandemic imposed a heavy burden on students, families, and educators. School and district interviewees spoke candidly about how personally challenging the pandemic had been for themselves and others, often in unexpected ways. By the summer of 2020, the educators we spoke with expressed a belief that these challenges would remain well into the new school year ahead of them.
August 2020
Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic
Missouri schools reopened during August 2020 based on guidance provided by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The guidelines contained clear virus mitigation strategies but no statewide health mandates, as reopening was a decision left to local school boards and local jurisdictions.
Priorities
The educators we spoke with shared that they observed an acute increase in the mental health needs of students and families dealing with the toll of the pandemic. Principals described taking steps to manage educator anxiety and workload, introducing morale-boosting activities, and making an effort to keep things in perspective. At the state level, Missouri moved to address teacher and counselor burnout and promote staff retention by protecting time for self-care.
Teaching and Learning
The district leaders we spoke with praised teachers for their creativity and adaptability under extraordinary circumstances. In some cases, they also shared their plans for rethinking things they had traditionally done, like changing their grading policies or how they support students as they transition from one grade to another.
Successes
Commissioner Vandeven and statewide officials prioritized data analysis to better understand the effect of the digital divide on student engagement: how some students seemed to thrive in a virtual environment while others struggled. Our school-level interviewees shared similar stories and noted that unsurprisingly, virtual learning worked best when families could invest time and resources into it. Educators praised their students’ resilience, explaining that in the face of incredible obstacles, their limitless students persevered through a turbulent year.
Challenges
The educators we talked with reported that their students’ virtual attendance declined in comparison to the spring of 2020, and became more inconsistent as the 2020-21 school year went on.
December 2020
What Comes Next for Districts?
Educators and leaders at the state and local levels observed that the pandemic exposed inequities that already existed—inequalities that would continue to show up in attendance and performance data as the school year continued. For some educators, it provided an opportunity to re-examine how they supported their students. And while our interviewees looked forward to the return of in-person instruction, many shared concerns about students’ sense of belonging, not only as they participate in virtual learning, but also when they return to in-person learning.
January 2021
The Path to Recovery
Missouri’s education governance structure emphasizes local control, which leaves many recovery and reopening decisions to the school district level. At an annual conference in March 2021, superintendents from Missouri’s 555 local education agencies met in person for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. Joined by Missouri Commissioner Margie Vandeven, they discussed reopening timetables, safety, and student supports; some schools had been operating in-person since summer 2020, while others had yet to reopen in person at all.
By May 2021, the availability of COVID-19 vaccines enabled more districts to think about reopening to in-person instruction and activities. Throughout the spring, educators were already beginning to focus on expanded and retooled summer enrichment experiences: more hours per day, more weeks overall, and more students enrolled, with a focus on prioritizing enrichment and social engagement over pure academic seat time.
Reopening and Reemerging
Missouri educators cited student and educator mental health and social-emotional needs as among their top priorities and concerns—concerns shared by Missouri Commissioner Margie Vandeven, who described the importance of social and emotional supports in recovering from the isolation and loss of a profoundly difficult year.
But even once in-person instruction was deemed possible, educators described the inherent tension and the need to maintain a focus on safety. Though COVID-19 cases were on the decline nationwide, they stressed that the pandemic was not over; by summer 2021, the novel coronavirus’ highly transmissible Delta variant had reached Missouri in earnest, leading to a surge in new cases.
The American Rescue Plan
By summer 2021, state administrators and local leaders were developing plans for using American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding over the next 3 school years. Commissioner Vandeven described the state’s priorities for the more than $1.9 billion in ARP funding headed to Missouri, including investments in internet infrastructure, mental health supports, and closing the digital divide.
The superintendents and principals we interviewed cited an increased focus on literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional learning and the desire to use funds both to provide support and to assess the ongoing effectiveness of those supports. One superintendent said that their district would be able to leverage existing partnerships and expand trauma-informed supports to students and families both in and out of school; another educator discussed adding more teachers to bring class sizes down. Multiple educators said they were already thinking ahead to what would happen when the ARP funding period came to an end, and how to potentially sustain these new levels of support.
July 2021
Lessons for the Future
For many of our Missouri educators, the most important lessons of the pandemic were the value of the network of interpersonal relationships among stakeholders in a school, the importance of building on educators’ personal and professional strengths, and the need to preserve their mental health and well-being. Educators described the sheer fatigue of a long and tumultuous school year, and the need to depend on other adults for support. One interviewee said the pandemic was a reality check and a reminder to always keep things in perspective.
Missouri
Read more to find out how an appointed Commissioner of Education supports LEAs during the pandemic in a local-control state.
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