Since 2019 the PRiME Center has issued reports that feature the highest growth schools in Missouri, translating state growth data into a scale that parents, educators and policymakers can use. Our recent Special Edition of the PRiME Growth Report Series examines the average PRiME Growth Scores of schools since COVID, over the three periods where we have full data: the 2021–22, 2022–23, and 2023–24 school years.

When we talk about how students are doing in subjects like reading and math, it’s more helpful to look at how much they grow over time rather than just where they stand at one moment. This report continues the PRiME Center’s efforts to highlight Missouri’s excellent schools by examining student growth in the state's most rural schools over the last three years.

Each year, Missouri gives standardized tests to all public school kids grades 3 through 8 to gauge their proficiency in math and English. In the 2023–2024 school year, only a tenth of KIPP Wonder’s kids who took the tests scored “proficient” in English. That’s 31 points below the state average. But it’s just a snapshot—and, in large part, due to factors outside any school’s control, such as community and family resources. Missouri also calculates a growth metric, one that Collin Hitt, the executive director of Saint Louis University’s education policy group, PRiME Center, calls “the best in the country.” It asks the question: How far did students move forward in a subject, regardless of where they started, and in comparison to other similarly situated students? And on that metric, KIPP Wonder showed the second largest average leap in English of all public elementary schools in Missouri, according to a PRiME analysis. (They were second only to a school in the Ozarks.)

The PRiME Center’s Executive Director, Dr. Collin Hitt, breaks down the Missouri Growth Model and answers frequently asked questions about Growth Scores.   

Dozens of Missouri schools have been recognized as the state’s “highest growth schools” in a series of new rankings from the PRiME Center at Saint Louis University. These schools are being highlighted for the significant educational gains their students made over the last two school years.