MISIP 5 Formally Approved for Implementation This Fall

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) gave their final presentation to the State Board of Education regarding the Missouri School Improvement Program (MISIP) this week. The plan includes all of the tools for measuring school and teacher performance to help each district prepare their Annual Performance Report (APR) which is a tool used by the state to determine a school district's accreditation.

"Schools will have multiple ways of achieving the standards including showing student progress and/or evidence of student growth. Because accreditation is based on multiple years of data, MSIP 5 will be used for accreditation purposes beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. School and district APRs generated during the transition from MSIP 4 to MSIP 5 will be used to inform each school and district of its progress toward meeting or exceeding the state targets."

The main stream press has provided few details on the program, so we are providing more detail here from the presentation made to the SBE.

 MISIP5 Policy Goals

• Promote Continuous Improvement and Innovation 
• Establish the State's Expectations
• Distinguish Performance of Schools and Districts
• Empower All Stakeholders

 MISIP Performance Standards will cover the usual:

• Academic Achievement
• Subgroup Achievement
• College and Career Readiness (K-12 only)
• High School Readiness (K-8 only)
• Attendance Rate
• Graduation Rate (K-12 only) 

The plan also calls for regional meetings to:

• Identify Lowest 5% performing schools and provide drastic intervention and assistance
• Ensure EVERY school is “Good Enough”
• Ensure EVERY school Gets Better

DESE's vision of accountability

 

Note - Even DESE calls the upcoming Common Core Standards Federal Standards. Local districts are responsible for formative assessments which tell the teacher whether the students are learning the material so he/she can make adjustments within the unit.

The rest of the presentation simply demonstrates that they are trying very hard to quantify the means of deciding whether or not the school system is working. Eating a bowl of granola will provide less crunching than the numbers generated for school performance.

One  significant change is that the metric will now use multiple years of data to measure academic performance which is meant to reduce volatility. In addition, Subgroups (which include ethnicity, English Language Learners, Free & Reduced Lunch etc.) will be reported on individually with separate targets (in some cases,) although accountability will be applied to a supersubgroup so that no individual subgroup will be systematically eliminated due to its small size.  This last requirement is meant to level the playing field between districts.

To view the full presentation click here. 

At 100 pages, the presentation is a lot to cover. In a Nancy Pelosi-esque way, we will have to start using the system in order to see what is in the system and whether it works as designed.