Sheldon school report highlights student achievements, identifies areas to improve

Recently, Sheldon schools released the district's annual report card and like most report cards it held both good and bad news. The state of Missouri requires every school district to complete a district report card that contains information on the school, from test scores to budget details.

The good news for Sheldon is the school still holds it's status as a "waived" school from the Missouri School Improvement Plan. Without the "waived" designation the MSIP will come in a spend several days evaluating the school. "We are down to about a two hour review. This is something that you really want to happen," said Sheldon Superintendent Phyllis Sprenkle.

Sprenkle is also proud of the 40 percent of Sheldon teachers who have a masters degree or are in the process of finishing them. In addition, the average experience of Sheldon teachers is 14.9 years.

"We have a really fine crew of teachers," said Sprenkle.

On the other hand, the Sheldon report card did have some less than stellar MAP test scores. Third graders had decreased proficiency scores in communication arts and reading but had increased proficiency in science. Fourth graders had lower levels of proficiency in math and social studies when compared with last year's scores. In the upper grades, the seventh grade had no one scoring proficient in communication arts, science and reading and the 10th grade having no one proficient in math or science. The 8th grade scored an overall proficiency levels in math and social studies while high school Juniors fell below last year's proficiency in communication arts but increased it in social studies.

"These test scores are not very good," said Sprenkle. "We had two years with showing this nice progression and then we have done this."

After careful and extensive analysis, Sprenkle sees that there are several possible reasons for the low test numbers.

"We have tried to analyze it from every step of the way. One thing is our small numbers, if we happen to hit a class, that in general, are a little weaker then we do have trouble there," she noted.

However, Sprenkle sees the culprit of the low test scores, in this case, was last years flu. "Last year we dealt with about six to eight weeks of the flu in January and February and we think that we had so many kids that were in and out that we didn't get all of the instruction covered."

Provided there is not another heavy flu season again this year Sprenkle is optimistic about bringing test scores back up.

"Our teachers have been doing a lot of work on individual strategies to address the areas that we were weak on," said Sprenkle. In addition, the state is going to release some grade level expectations to show teachers what the standards are and give a target to shoot for.

"We are all being held more accountable," said Sprenkle. "Which is not a terrible situation."