Missouri should revisit the way it supports “chronically low-performing schools” over the coming year, state Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said as she unveiled her priorities in a State Board of Education meeting Wednesday.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s current approach is “cookie cutter,” she said, lacking individual supports customized to struggling schools.
“When you have a school district in crisis, there’s not a real plan on how to address that,” Eslinger said. “So we need to have a more comprehensive plan to address that.”
Board member Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, of Pasadena Hills, underlined the importance of careful intervention.
Westbrooks-Hodge spoke about a conversation she had with a school superintendent who worked in an Illinois district east of St. Louis when it lost accreditation.
“She described an intense, hands-on approach with the state of Illinois walking hand in hand,” Westbrooks-Hodge said. “She asked why that approach wasn’t done with underperforming school districts in Missouri.”
There are also challenges coming from the federal level with “disruption” in the U.S. Department of Education, Eslinger said. The department is “struggling to draw down federal dollars more consistently.”
She suggested “a shift in the way we manage our federal programs,” such as consolidating programs in a centralized application.
The department should also improve its data handling, she said, adding that DESE “needs to be much better and much more efficient in its data system.”
“I don’t know how many times I sat on the Senate floor, and I didn’t have the ability to rebut somebody’s idea of what was happening in public education because we don’t have the data,” Eslinger said.
The department also needs to improve its website and increase connectivity with the public.
There will be noticeable changes in the communications department, she said. Currently, the department is looking for a new director of communications.
“We have been responsive to people who have questions, but we haven’t talked to the state as a whole,” she said.
She has asked the state board to conduct annual evaluations of the commissioner, which the board wasn’t doing when she took office last year.
The board is meeting Wednesday and Thursday as part of a board retreat to reorient members to the expectations and responsibilities of the board. Half of the board are new appointees, and the department has a number of high-ranking employees in new positions.
This story was originally published by Missouri Independent, part of the States Newsroom.
