Cape Girardeau School administrator James Englehart stood next to a stack of documents that towered over his head. The rest, he said, is in the other room.
The paperwork, which took a year to compile, will be turned over to a team of 41 educators who will examine the Cape Girardeau public schools this week.
The evaluation is part of the Missouri School Improvement Program, a process to classify schools based on what schools do and how well students perform.
All Missouri's public schools will go through this evaluation.
During the three days, visiting evaluators will interview 108 staff members one on one, each for 30 minutes. Today, the visiting team will interview the Board of Education at a 4:30 p.m. meeting.
The evaluation also includes a survey of parents, students and staff that was taken last March. The school district will receive the survey results this week.
The program looks at three areas: resources, process and performance.
Resources are the items a school district provides to get the job of educating students.
The process category includes 10 areas, including curriculum, instruction, counseling, administration and safety.
Performance is a look at the success of students: achievement, drop-out rates, post-high school status and plans for improving student performance.
In the past, the education department looked only at the resources part of the equation and schools received an AA or AAA classification based on the number of books in the library, the number of students per class, the number of hours in school and other resources available.
Six years ago, Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education decided taxpayers wanted more accountability from their schools. It developed the Missouri School Improvement Program and added the other two areas.
"Now we are looking at the end product," Englehart said. "Is what we're doing paying off the dividend we want?"
Preparations for this week's visit started a year ago. A committee of more than 125 people in Cape Girardeau has looked at the various study areas, collecting information, documenting what the school district is doing right and making plans to improve areas of weakness.
Englehart said some areas that need improvement came to light during the year of study and that steps have already been taken to make changes.
For example, one area of study concerns high school drop-outs. Depending on how the figures are calculated, Cape Girardeau's drop-out rate could be anywhere from 8 percent to 22 percent. Englehart said that each year about 90 students drop out of school. That is 90 students too many, he said.
With help from local service agencies, the school district is starting an alternative program for students who are considering dropping out in hopes of keeping them in school through graduation.
At the end of the visit, the school will get recommendations on other areas that need improvement.
The school district has a year to develop a specific plan for improvement, which then will be submitted to the state Department of Education.
In six years or so, another visitation team will arrive to check the plan on file and determine what progress has been made. Then another plan will be developed to continue the progress.
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