Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Commissioner's Newsletter

July 14, 2004

Dear School Administrator:

I will be seeing many of you in person in about three weeks at our annual summer Conference for School Administrators, but here are several important items we wanted to share with you prior to that meeting.

PANEL DISCUSSION WITH 3 SUPERINTENDENTS WILL
HIGHLIGHT AUGUST CONFERENCE FOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS

We are expecting more than 1,000 Missouri school officials and guests to attend the 43rd Annual Cooperative Conference for School Administrators at Tan-Tar-A on August 1-3. Our staff is working on final arrangements for what we hope will be an outstanding conference. We have made some small adjustments in the "traditional" schedule for the meeting, but I think we have assembled a strong program. If you have not already made arrangements to attend, it is not too late to register. You may obtain a registration form online and fax it to our office.

I am especially looking forward to the panel discussion with Ray Simon during the first general session of the conference on Monday afternoon (August 2). Mr. Simon is the former director of the Arkansas Department of Education, but he recently joined the U.S. Department of Education as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. I appreciate the state-level perspective that he has brought to the federal education bureaucracy, and I am happy that he was willing to take time to come to Missouri and take part in a panel discussion concerning No Child Left Behind.

I have invited three Missouri superintendents to join me for this panel discussion with Mr. Simon. They are Dr. Phyllis Chase, Columbia Public Schools; Dr. Hugh Kinney, Pattonville School District; and Dr. Ron Lankford, Webb City School District. I think this will be a useful and informative discussion.

We will have the usual breakout sessions on current issues that are important to you as you think about the beginning of another school year (legislation, finance, MSIP) as well as opportunities to visit with colleagues old and new. On Tuesday morning (August 3), there will be an organized breakfast and general session. We will conclude by mid-morning, however, so that you will have time to get home (if necessary) and vote.

NEW TECHNIQUE WILL BE USED IN CALCULATING "AYP"

We are currently planning to post the 2004 MAP results for all school districts on our password-protected Web site on Monday, August 16. At that time, you will be able to view and analyze all of your district’s detailed data. These data will be made available through the new "Crystal Reports" software tool. This software will give you and other members of your staff faster, fuller access to all of your data.

We plan to release all of the MAP data to the public and the news media on August 19 or 20 (Thursday or Friday).

In conjunction with releasing the MAP data, we must provide information about how many schools achieved adequate yearly progress (AYP), as required by No Child Left Behind. We also are required to identify "schools needing improvement," based on their not achieving AYP for two consecutive years in the same subject area.

With approval from the U.S. Department of Education, we intend to apply a statistical technique – confidence interval bands – to the analysis of this year’s MAP results for determination of AYP. Several states are adopting this method. The confidence intervals (CI) technique allows us to look at the scores for all subgroups and determine the overall probability (at the 99% confidence level) of accurately identifying a school that has made AYP.

We expect this technique to benefit a relatively small number of schools throughout the state in achieving AYP. The technique tends to be most beneficial for schools with small numbers of students in each subgroup. The "CI" technique will be applied only if it will HELP a district that otherwise would not make AYP.

You may recall that, as a result of additional flexibility granted by the U.S. Department of Education, we were able to make several changes in how we handle this year’s AYP data and calculations. Those changes were outlined in my letter of May 4, 2004 ("Update on NCLB Changes"). We hope the use of confidence intervals is another step that will be beneficial to some schools and districts.

UPDATE ON THE HIGH SCHOOL TASK FORCE

In April, I appointed a statewide "Task Force on the High School" to make recommendations to the State Board of Education and me about ways of strengthening Missouri’s public high schools. The 25-member panel is meeting twice this month and will meet several more times before submitting its recommendations next spring. The task force is made up of educators, school board members and business people. I asked Dr. Jerry Valentine, professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, to chair the panel and guide its work.

While giving the task force the freedom to consider a wide range of policy options, I asked the group to look at three specific areas:

1. Graduation requirements. The current minimum graduation requirements (22 units) were established 20 years ago, and most school districts now have local requirements that exceed the state’s minimum standards. It is probably time to update the state-level requirements, but the real challenge is to figure out ways to clarify and specify the content and the rigor of the courses that are required.

2. End-of-course exams. Is this something Missouri should consider? Several states use this approach (in varying forms) to define the desired content of certain required courses. All students must complete the state exams in these courses. There are pros and cons with this concept, of course, but I think it is something we need to consider carefully.

3. The "virtual high school." What are the long-term implications for state policy and local schools of the rapid growth of Internet-based learning opportunities? How do we set standards and monitor quality when students (and faculty) can "enroll" anywhere at any time to take classes? There are a host of policy issues in this area, and all states are grappling with these questions today.