St. Louis Language Immersion School Wins 3 Growth Awards from SLU PRiME Center
SLLIS Ranked as Top Charter School for Growth in St. Louis
St. Louis, Mo. (April 14, 2026) St. Louis Language Immersion School (SLLIS) recently received three PRiME Growth Awards from the Policy Research in Missouri Education (PRiME) Center at St. Louis University for promoting outstanding student growth during the 2024-25 school year. These Growth Awards include: English Language Arts (2024-25), Mathematics (2024-25), and English Language Arts (3-year, ending 2024-25). These awards highlight the school’s continued academic growth and the success of its students.
Each year, the SLU PRiME Center recognizes the highest growth schools in Missouri for ELA and Mathematics. While conventional wisdom often defines the “best” schools as those with the highest proficiency rates or standardized test scores, the PRiME Center Growth Reports take a different approach: evaluating schools based on how much progress students make from one year to the next. As a result, many schools appearing in the PRiME Center’s Top 20 are not those with the highest overall proficiency scores. Traditional proficiency metrics can overlook important context, as they are often influenced by factors such as poverty, housing instability, English learner status, and special education needs. Growth measures offer a more complete picture by highlighting the schools that are most effectively advancing student learning, regardless of where students start.
“Here at the PRiME Center, we argue that the best schools are the ones that help students cover the most ground in a single school year compared to the previous year,” PRiME Center Executive Director Dr. Collin Hitt said. “The best schools help meet kids where they are at, and help them make significant academic gains. A single standardized test score doesn’t tell you how much students learned in a given school year. By measuring growth, we can highlight and celebrate the incredible progress that schools make, even under challenging circumstances.”
The PRiME Center data shows SLLIS ranked No. 1 of 27 St. Louis Charter Schools in ELA for 2025 and across a three-year growth period from 2022-25. SLLIS also ranked No. 2 and No. 5, respectively, in those same categories across all 74 St. Louis charter and public schools. SLLIS finished No. 3 and No. 4 for 2025 and 2022-25 across all 58 charter schools in Missouri for growth in ELA.
“The SLLIS community is honored to be recognized with the Growth Awards, and we are incredibly proud of our students and staff for this achievement,” SLLIS Superintendent Dr. Meghan Hill said. “This recognition reflects the sustained, day-to-day commitment of our teachers, the perseverance of our students, and the strong partnership of our families, all of whom work together to drive meaningful academic growth.”
About St. Louis Language Immersion School
St. Louis Language Immersion School was founded in 2009 and is a charter school serving Pre-K through 8th grade to the City of St. Louis. The school provides students with a world-class, global, dual language immersion education in French, Spanish or Chinese, taught by native speakers. The one of a kind school was named the 2024 Best Public Charter School in Missouri and plays an essential role in the fabric of the St. Louis community. For more information, go to www.sllis.org.