SCHOOLS STILL UNCERTAIN ON REPORT CARDS

When students at Scott City schools receive their quarterly report cards this month, their parents can expect a report card about the district's achievements.

"When we have our parent-teacher conferences, I plan to hand out the district report cards," Superintendent Roger Tatum said. The conferences are planned this month.

Much like student report cards tell how a child is performing in the classroom, the district report card shows improvements and failures in the school system. It is the first year for the report cards.

But not all are being distributed in written forms; some districts are sending their report cards via home pages on the Internet.

The report card is required under the Outstanding Schools Act of 1993. It includes statistical information about finances, staff, salaries, class sizes and dropout rates.

"This is an important milestone for Missouri schools and taxpayers," said Gov. Mel Carnahan. "The Outstanding Schools Act calls for local schools to be more accountable to their patrons and to focus on student achievement. The new report cards will help achieve those goals."

But who should receive the report cards?

Area superintendents are still trying to figure out where they should be sent.

"It's finished, but I wasn't satisfied with an area of it," Tatum said. He plans to send copies of the completed report to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the two state representatives and state senator serving the area.

According to Missouri law, the report cards should be distributed to "all media outlets serving the district, and shall be made available to all district patrons, and to each member of the general assembly representing the legislative district which contains a portion of the school district."

However, few elected officials actually received the reports Tuesday since many schools missed the Oct. 1 deadline.

There's no way to determine how many districts met the deadline since no government agency was required to receive the reports, said Mary Jo Joiner of DESE.

"It's specific in the law that it goes to the legislature, but we've gotten a lot here," she said. The reports received at DESE will serve as models for other districts.

The State Board of Education should adopt a ruling at its December meeting that would require all districts to submit the reports to DESE for the board's review.

The Cape Girardeau and Jackson school districts are still putting final touches on their reports. Both expect to be complete by Friday.

"It's monumental," said Dr. Howard Jones, superintendent of the Jackson district. "We've been working on it day and night in trying to pull it together."

The Cape Girardeau School District hopes to include the report card information in an upcoming issue of its newsletter, "Your Schools," said superintendent, Dr. Dan Tallent.

The report can include only raw data or an explanation of the information. "I don't want to just meet a requirement," Tallent said. "I'd rather have something that people enjoy looking at and can get some information from it."

Jones agreed. He would like the district to build a home page on the Internet to include information from the report card.

The report cards include everything from student achievement test scores to the number of students participating in extracurricular activities in a district. However, some of the information can be misleading.

The report includes information about the cost of extracurricular activities, but should that figure include the salary stipend for sponsors or the results of fund-raising activities?

"Football may have a $15,000 expense, but there's no place to report the revenue at the gate, which may be $30,000," Jones said.

The report is probably a good thing for the patrons, Jones said, but it adds additional work for the administrators.

"It has some value, but it keeps us busy when we could be improving education," he said.

Many school districts already keep the records requested in the report card, but they are often in separate files or in different formats.

"We keep most of it but it's in separate places," Tatum said. "The test scores come in medians, quintiles and standards. They are all difficult to understand, so you have to explain and interpret before you can compare."

Since the information found in the report card is identical throughout the state, districts will be able to make comparisons with area schools about testing scores and programs.

SCHOOL REPORT CARDS

What the Outstanding Schools Act report card says about each Missouri public school district:

-- Number of resident and nonresident students enrolled on the last Wednesday of September.

-- Rates of pupil attendance.

-- High school dropout rate.

-- Ratios of students to all teachers, students to administrators and students to clasroom teachers.

-- Average years of experience for professional staff.

-- Number of staff whose highest degree is above a bachelor's degree.

-- Student achievement as determined through state assessment systems.

-- Average teacher's salary.

-- Average administrator's salary.

-- Average salaries of noncertified personnel compared to state averages.

-- Average per pupil expenditures for each building in the district.

-- Voted tax rates which includes tax rate ceiling for operations and tax rate ceiling.

-- Adjusted tax rates which includes actual tax rates as filed with county clerk.

-- Assessed valuation.

-- Percent of the district's budget that comes from state, federal and local revenues.

-- All extracurricular activities offered in the district.

-- Costs associated with each extracurricular activity.

-- Number of students eligible for free and reduced lunches.

-- School calendar information to include number of days for student attendance, number of days for parent-teacher conferences and number of days for staff development and in-service training.

-- List of course offerings with units of credit.

-- Rates of participation in parent-teacher conferences, special education programs, early childhood special education programs, Parents as Teachers programs, vocational educational programs, gifted or enrichment programs, advanced placement programs and college admissions testing.

-- Number of students continuing education in post-secondary programs.

-- Information about job placement for students in vocational education programs.

-- District's most recent accreditation through Missouri School Improvement Program.

-- Achievement data, including ACT and SAT tests, should include at least one comparison of the district and state averages or the district average to a similar district average and no less than a three-year history of district scores.