The article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 31, 2013: After the Mehlville School District said that it could accept only 150 transfer students from the unaccredited Riverview Gardens School District, Riverview Gardens added the Kirkwood School District as the second district for which it would pay transportation. Subsequently Kirkwood has said on its website that it could only accept 100 students.
That got us to thinking. How did these school districts decide how many slots they had available? What factors go into determining how many transfer students can be accepted?
The Beacon plans to delve into these formulas as part of its ongoing coverage of the student transfers.
In the meantime, though, we took a look at numbers that could offer some insight into those issues: How has student enrollment in these districts changed over time? Has it gone up, down or remained stable? How has the student-teacher ratio changed over time? Has it gone up, down or stayed the same?
We'll be checking at how student enrollment and student-teacher ratios may affect the number of transfer students.
What would you ask the data?
As part of our reporting on school transfers, Beacon presentation editor Brent Jones has been digging into the wealth of data provided by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
