How Good Is Lee's Summit and Missouri?

Spending

Our tax levy is one of the highest in the metro area, yet we spend among the least on our students. Our children can learn in any building.

During the last election one of the present school board members said that he would hold up our facilities to any of those in Johnson County. I didn’t move to Lee’s Summit to compete with Johnson County. I moved here because the schools were supposed to be among the best that the metro had to offer.

Here is an article from the Lee’s Summit R-VII newsletter:

The Kansas City Business Journal recently featured a listing of the top 25 school districts based on enrollments. The information including budget and employee statistics appeared in an October 2008 issue of the publication.

Lee’s Summit R-7 ranked seventh in the metropolitan area in terms of total enrollment among the 25 districts selected for the newspaper edition. The R-7 School District’s total enrollment for this school year is 17,137.

The six districts in the metro area with higher enrollments are Shawnee Mission, Kan,; Olathe, Kan.; Kansas City, MO, Blue Valley, Kan.; Kansas City Kan.; and North Kansas City.

The Business Journal also featured a chart listing the top 19 school districts in terms of cost per pupil. On this list, the Lee's Summit R-7 School District was the lowest, spending the least per student of the 19 districts included in the newspaper's ranking.


While we have received the Distinction of Performance Award for eight years we have also shown regression for certain subgroups.

Lee’s Summit has been blessed with a high population of children that are high achievers. Studies show that children in affluent school districts do better than those in high poverty districts. We live in an affluent suburb with the highest tax levy in the metro area. We have parents that are professionals and children that have access to many amenities that allow them to reach their potential. We have some of the highest paid teachers in the state of Missouri.

Is it because they go to school in Lee’s Summit or does Lee’s Summit look good because those kids attend their schools?

If you brought kids from the Kansas City School District out here would they prosper as well? Isn’t that one of the subgroup of students that Lee’s Summit is failing? The numbers show that Lee’s Summit scores have regressed for black students, free lunch students, and special education students. There is no denying that.

Missouri is 45th in the country for education. Is it enough to be the best of the worst? I would like to think that we would strive for more than that. Missouri handed out 330 of the same awards across the whole state. Those same districts also were failing black students, free lunch students, and special education students. Can you really claim distinction in performance when the only students that are doing well are the ones that would do well no matter where they went?




The 2009 U.S.News & World Report America's Best High Schools methodology, developed by School Evaluation Services, a K-12 education data research business run by Standard & Poor's, is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show that the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.

Lee's Summit Senior High Jackson County, Lee's Summit, MO
Poverty-Adjusted Performance
Disadvantaged Student Performance Gap
College Readiness Index
Minority Enrollment
Disadvantaged Student Enrollment
1.10
10.1
Not applicable
13.0%
11.9%
Bronze

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