Once again, the Hickman Mills School District was optimistic that it would regain full accreditation from the state of Missouri.
And once again, the Missouri State Board of Education shot its hopes down.
After a discussion during which Hickman Mills’ name was not spoken aloud, the board voted Jan. 13 to maintain the provisionally accredited status of Hickman Mills and three other districts.
The governor-appointed board raised the status of Osborn R-O, a tiny school district west of Cameron that has now met the state’s superintendent certification requirements. It lowered the status of St. Louis Public Schools to provisionally accredited, though the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had recommended that all other districts’ accreditation status stay the same.
Board member Kerry Casey, who made the motion to demote St. Louis Public Schools, also successfully proposed that the board require extra reporting on 12 school districts and eight charter schools that she said had scored below 70% — the standard for full accreditation — for three years in a row. They include Kansas City-area districts Grandview and Center.
Hickman Mills — a south Kansas City district with less than 5,000 K-12 students — isn’t one of those low-scoring districts.
In late 2025, Hickman Mills earned 80.5% of the possible points on its Annual Performance Report scores from the state, marking the second year in a row it passed the 70% threshold, and brought its three-year composite score up to 74.1%.
Compared to the state’s other districts and charter schools, the 2025 score puts Hickman Mills in the top half. Its three-year composite score, while lower, is still better than 25% of districts’.
You wouldn’t know that from the district’s accreditation status, which leaves it in the company of just four others — less than 1% of Missouri districts, including one in the Bootheel and three in the St. Louis area — that are only partially accredited. The rest are fully accredited.
In late 2024, when Hickman Mills thought it had met the mark for full accreditation, the state said it needed more years of data. In November 2025, Katie Roe, the district’s assistant superintendent for academic services, told The Beacon she was “cautiously optimistic” that the new, higher score would be enough.
That wasn’t the case.
“The current classification process requires two consecutive APR composites above 70% to change classification from provisionally accredited to accredited status,” Lucas Bond, DESE chief communications officer, wrote in a statement. “Hickman Mills does not meet these criteria. Hickman Mills 2024 composite score was 68.3% and the 2025 composite score was 74.1.”
Lynn Goehring, Hickman Mills’ assistant director of communications and community engagement, said in an email that the district did not have anyone available to speak about the accreditation decision.
“With Dr. (Dennis) Carpenter now serving as the district’s full-time, long-term superintendent, HMC-1 is preparing to engage with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to better understand the steps required to earn full accreditation,” she wrote, adding that Carpenter was “awaiting a meeting” with Assistant Commissioner Lisa Sireno.
“The district is proud of its 2025 80.5% APR score, which reflects meaningful progress, while also recognizing that accreditation decisions are based on multiple factors,” she wrote. “HMC-1 looks forward to working collaboratively with DESE to gain clarity and continue moving toward full accreditation.”
How APR scores work
Missouri calculates APR scores for schools by assigning points for various factors, such as achievement on tests, student growth, graduation rates and improvement plans.
Both charter schools and traditional school districts receive a score based on the percentage of total possible points they could earn. Missouri uses districts’ scores to decide whether they are accredited, partially accredited or unaccredited.
Districts also have to meet other standards, such as having a properly certified superintendent, following the law and meeting minimum standards of financial stability.
Amid changes in the scoring system and after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state hasn’t used the APR scores to update classifications for years. Kansas City Public Schools regained full accreditation through a special process in early 2022 and has recently scored in the accredited range.
The state doesn’t determine charter schools’ accreditation status, but their sponsors use the scores to evaluate them.
Last year, as dozens of schools fell short of the mark for accreditation under the state’s updated system, DESE decided not to base accreditation on one year of data. Instead, it decided to look at two consecutive three-year composite scores.
That meant waiting for the fall 2025 scores to even have two composite scores in a row using the latest system. DESE had said it would be willing to recommend raising accreditation based on APR scores starting this year.
The state can’t use the 2022 scores to penalize districts. Next year will be the first year that two composite scores are available without including 2022 data, meaning DESE could recommend lowering accreditation as well.
The decision to include more years of data was a reprieve for some fully accredited schools whose scores missed the mark. But it was a disappointment for Hickman Mills, a partially accredited district with rising scores.
While Hickman Mills’ performance scores are improving, it’s faced other challenges recently including financial issues, a potential school closure, an audit from the state and the removal of Superintendent Yaw Obeng in July.
Hickman Mills’ improved APR scores reflect data from when Obeng led the district.
Hickman Mills apparently wasn’t told far in advance that its 2024 composite score was a firm barrier to being recommended for full accreditation. Roe told The Beacon in November that the district was cautiously hopeful based on conversations with the state and the response to its presentation last year.
Low-performing districts
The state board — made up of members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate — can choose to go against DESE’s recommendations, as it did by lowering St. Louis Public Schools’ accreditation status.
Board members didn’t discuss overriding the recommendation for Hickman Mills.
Instead, they focused on schools that are fully accredited despite low performance. Although St. Louis Public Schools was the only one to have its status lowered, the board wants more information by its April meeting on some districts’ and charter schools’ goals and plans for achieving them.
Casey, the board member who proposed the additional reporting, said the list of 12 traditional districts and eight charter schools that had scored below 70% three years in a row was included in board materials.
Bond, the DESE spokesperson, provided the list to The Beacon.
Two Kansas City charter schools — Hope Leadership Academy and Kansas City Girls Prep Academy — are included on the charter school section of the list. The Beacon found additional charter schools that appear to meet the criteria but were not included, such as Brookside Charter School and KIPP: Endeavor Academy in Kansas City.
Some St. Louis charter schools also appear to have been mistakenly added or left out. Bond did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the charter school list was incorrect by the time of publication.
The Beacon was able to confirm the list of traditional school districts subject to additional reporting, which includes:
- Bradleyville R-I
- Center 58
- Grandview C-4 (near Kansas City)
- Grandview R-II (in Hillsboro)
- Laquey R-V
- Lexington R-V
- Normandy Schools Collaborative
- Riverview Gardens
- Sherwood Cass R-VIII
- St. Louis City
- Sturgeon R-V
- Success R-VI
Of those low-scoring districts, only four “have shown improvement year after year, yet still remain below 70%,” Casey said. “This is a clear indicator that these 12 districts are failing to implement the required school improvement plan at an acceptable level.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
