Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

No More Prizes for Predicting Rain--Only for Building Arks

Note:  Following is the edited text of a keynote address given by Commissioner King during the annual back-to-school conference for public school officials, sponsored by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.  About 1,000 school superintendents and other administrators attended the meeting.

As we gather here this hot August afternoon, I decided I would talk about the weather. The weather seems to be an important factor in the lives of most school administrators. Is it too hot to have school? Are the roads too slick to run the buses? Is it going to rain so commencement has to be held inside? From the beginning of school to the end of school, administrators think about the weather.

Since we spend so much time thinking about the weather, I decided that, as we get ready to start school, I would spend a little more of your time focusing on the weather. At 6:15 in the evening, you may watch weather. You probably watch the weather again at 10:15 at night if you stay up that late. If it’s winter, you get up at 4:00 o’clock to check on the weather, get a new report, or maybe check the roads; and by 5:15, you call off school. And then, at 7:30, the sun is shining. The weather impacts your lives.

So, today I want to talk about meteorology. I also want to talk about the Old Testament, about fairy tales, about literature. And, as you might have guessed, there may be a little bit about kids thrown in here as well.

What I want to focus on is the "Noah Principle." The Noah Principle is this: No more prizes for predicting rain, only prizes for building "arks." I mentioned all of those weather forecasts. You know the 6:15 weather forecast, or the 10:15 weather forecast; or, frankly, when you get up at 4:00 to check the weather on that mid-January morning, it really doesn’t matter. It’s what happens at 6:00. And, on the good day, on the "good day," it happens at 6:00. The snow doesn’t start at 7:02, right after the buses have made their first pickup.

So, I want us to think about building arks, not just predicting rain. Some of you know me pretty well and would question how much of a Biblical scholar I am, and you’d be right. But I do know that we all know about Noah because he built an ark, not because he forecast rain. Not only did Noah build an ark, he had the faith in his weather forecast to build it on dry ground miles from any large body of water. He acted on faith and on his belief that change was about to happen.

Building an ark is what we’re about, and that’s what we’re about now. We’re not going to get any prizes for predicting rain. There is an old adage that states, "If you don’t like Missouri weather, wait a few minutes, and it will change." Change in this business is inevitable, too; it happens. Currently, we’re seeing a lot of change on the horizon; but, frankly, there are a few people who appear to be focused on predicting rain rather than building arks. Everyone here knows what would have happened to Noah if he had only predicted rain.

Let’s think about the change we’re involved in. In just a year, we will begin the fourth cycle of MSIP. This school year will begin grade-level assessments for the purpose of school improvement and student accountability, district accountability. We have a new foundation formula through which the state will distribute money. New high school graduation requirements are being considered. And, of course, there’s always the No Child Left Behind Act looming out there.

All reflect change. And, like the Old Testament, there are those who forecast that any one of those is the next big flood. There are others who approach each one as just a southerly breeze but view them collectively as too great a challenge. Each may be a little challenging to the way we approach school, but none will be too traumatic if we build the correct arks.

Why Me?  Why Now?

You may be viewing all of these changes as more than you want to deal with, saying "Why me? Why now?" Let’s wait on some of these.

Noah was cast into his role because he had faith in his "weather forecaster," and he accepted the challenge. Did he want that task as an old man? I don’t think so! But, he was the one chosen for the job. A similar thing happened to Frodo, the young Hobbit boy, in Middle Earth, in The Lord of the Rings. He has no magic powers, but he is chosen to destroy the all-powerful ring that gives its owner unlimited power over any force.

Frodo feels the pressure and experiences frustration because so much is demanded of him, and he says to Gandalf: "I wish it need not have happened in my time."

To which Gandalf replies: "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Let me say that again: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

We sometimes just cannot control the circumstances that are thrust upon us by chance. To me, the theme of The Lord of the Rings is that unlikely heroes become pre-eminent among the more likely heroes.

Frodo is not big, or strong, or powerful in any way. But, he is "as tough as old tree roots." He is "as constant as the season," and he just keeps putting one foot in front of another until he gets the job done. He is the ultimate hero of the story.

We, like Frodo, "have to decide . . . what to do with the time that is given us."

I believe, therefore, that the kids will be best served if we spend our time building arks, not on predicting rain, not on predicting, as Chicken Little did in that wonderful tale, that "the sky is falling." Our young granddaughters see through Chicken Little’s reasoning. They love the story, but they don’t appear to want to grow up to be like Chicken Little.

Impact of MSIP

The Missouri School Improvement Program has been a primary school improvement tool used in this state for 15 years. It has provided the vehicle for school improvement in a way that was not even anticipated by its founders.

When we examine the most recent 10-year history of school accreditation, we see a significant decrease in the number of provisionally and unaccredited school districts. You and your predecessors have risen to the challenge, and our kids are the benefactors. Ten years ago there were 158 provisionally accredited districts; today there are a dozen. No small task.

School Accreditation History with MSIP

The impact on student achievement in Missouri has been profound. It is our hope, as we go into the next cycle of MSIP, that improvement will continue. It’s obvious that the thrust of MSIP becomes more and more driven by student performance data. And, many of you know that we at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education continue to focus our efforts on those districts who, for a multitude of reasons, need technical assistance in meeting the needs of their students to a greater degree than others.

Therefore, not only will the fourth cycle continue to ratchet up the emphasis on student performance, it will also appropriately reward those districts that have demonstrated improved student performance to a level where they can be granted a waiver, or a partial waiver, from their MSIP review. I feel good about this. It’s one way, and about the only way, frankly, that we can appropriately allocate limited resources to provide assistance to help districts to help kids.

An important part of your continued efforts to improve student performance is the implementation of grade-level assessments. Those will become a part of MSIP and of No Child Left Behind; but, more significantly, you will use the assessments to improve teaching and learning.

I want to thank you for your participation in the field tests last spring. We’re confident that, with the number of students who were tested in each area, we will be able to establish accurate cut points for our new assessment. It’s important that we get those right; that we make certain that our expectation is high enough; that we don’t lower expectations for kids. It’s also important that we have performance levels that adequately reflect the positive things going on in the classrooms in your schools each day. We’re grateful for your help so far. We tested over 222,000 students in 476 school districts, and we’ll be getting educators and others together in late fall to establish those performance levels.

Of course, that fits in with the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of No Child Left Behind. It fits in with the goal of all kids being proficient by 2014. It is also an important part of building an ark that will tolerate the rain of criticism and help us get better. We’ve created grade-level expectations so teachers can better teach kids in a way that will enable them to succeed in school and life--and, yes, on the test. We continue to provide quality professional development to staff members so that they can help kids, and our test scores continue to show that more and more kids are learning.

The New Funding Formula

Another one of the opportunities is the new foundation formula that was adopted by the members of the Missouri General Assembly last May. I know a number of you think that formula won’t work; a number are predicting rain. A number of you are going to continue in your efforts to move the state toward more funding for education. Let me talk about a couple of important pieces of that formula. One, the formula recognized those districts that were scoring 100 points on the APR. It recognized those districts as providing an adequate education for the students in those districts and created the new formula’s state funding target based on those data. Is that enough? We can argue about that. Is it phased in over too long a time? We can argue about that. Is it better than the current formula? We can certainly argue about that. The point is:  Student performance in the districts that were meeting expectations created the basis for the targeted funding levels established by the new law. Funding and student performance are directly related.

The aspect of the formula that calls for significant changes in leadership is that weightings for students with special needs, for students on free and reduced lunch, and for Limited English Proficient students were created to replace line items for funding for those students. This change provides opportunities for leaders to focus on educating all students, not on just counting students in various categories because it generates money. It also poses great challenges as you make local decisions about the best use of your educational dollars to meet the needs of all kids. Your gifted students must be educated, but view it as what they need educationally, not financially. With flexibility comes responsibility. To paraphrase Gandalf, "all we have to decide is what to do with the money that is given us."

New Graduation Requirements

A few in this room view the proposed changes in high school graduation requirements as a strong rain storm. Remember, no prizes for predicting rain, only prizes for building arks. It might be a slight spring shower that creates the opportunity for flowers to bloom and grass to grow, but it isn’t a storm! What kinds of issues need to be addressed? What are the types of materials needed to build the ark?

Our oldest granddaughter, Kayla, will enter the eighth grade in a few days. She is in the class of 2010, and she is so excited that her grandpa is leading a charge to increase her graduation requirements. Kayla is a good student; she might even be a great student if she just had more time to study. She is so busy excelling at soccer, softball and basketball that she hardly has time for academics. I hope she continues to excel and stays involved in athletics. Kayla will take a rigorous academic curriculum, whatever the state graduation requirements are.

But, the ark we want her and her 55,000 classmates to build to protect them through the storms in their lives will be determined in high school. We need to give them different ark-building tools and materials than we have in the past.

Kayla’s little sister, Kelsi, will enter third grade this fall. You’ve heard me talk about Kelsi often. The new graduation requirements will impact her too, but the most compelling aspect of our work for kids as young as Kelsi is that she and those kids younger than she are likely to have jobs that haven’t even been thought of yet.

As we look at the needs of the students we have, and look at the needs of the students who will be graduating from our schools in the future, we have to accept the fact that kids need better preparation for life than we have been able to give a number of them. Let’s be clear. Thanks to dedicated teachers and school leaders, schools in Missouri do a great job with a lot of kids.  But a lot of kids is not all kids; and we have to be concerned about all kids. We have to give all kids opportunities for a more relevant and rigorous high school experience. More students should be earning Advanced Placement (AP) credits and fewer taking remedial classes in college.

I recently read a quote by William Shed. He said, "A ship in a safe harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for." Well, grammatically, that quote has problems; but the message is quite clear. If we want to build schools that provide opportunities that don’t challenge kids, that we can feel comfortable will not increase dropout rates, they will be safe. Or, we may believe we shouldn’t change because we may not find that science teacher whom we need to offer that other science course. But, you know what, that’s not why kids come to school. Or, to use Shed’s phrase, "that’s not what kids come to school for." You see, we need to enable kids to build their own arks.

All of the issues that I’ve mentioned--and there are lots of others--but all of the issues that I’ve mentioned really speak to the needs of kids. If we’re unwilling to build the ark, you know what’s going to happen? You know what would have happened if Noah had not built the ark? See, Noah didn’t get a prize because he predicted rain. Noah got a prize because he built the ark. I believe that the kids in Missouri are worth our efforts to build the ark. We owe it to them. We don’t have time to wait. You know, when it started raining on Noah, it didn’t stop for 40 days. If he had waited 10 more days to start, he wouldn’t have had the ark finished. If we wait for that magic time when we have enough money to raise high school graduation requirements, or implement accountability, or make sure all teachers are available, or everybody has a new school building, whatever we want to talk about, we’ll never have it. Our kids are going to be stumbling around in the rain. They’re not going to be dry in the ark.

We, like Frodo, have to accept the responsibility to use the time that is given us.

So, as we go forward into the school year, I pledge to you that we will provide as much of the ark-building material as we can. I pledge to you that we will work with you to help implement a new formula so you can buy as much ark-building material as possible. I pledge to you that we will work on making the requirements for the ark as efficient as possible, but I equally pledge to you that we’re not going to offer one single reward for predicting rain. We’re only going to recognize arks; and, if we see a situation where an ark is not being built, we’re going to be on the side of the kids because we think they deserve an ark.

I look forward to working with you to meet the many challenges we face. Our kids deserve no less.