Missouri has been discussing what makes a great school and how to measure school progress. The State Board of Education today authorized a process that will give Missourians the opportunity to comment on new accountability standards in the next revision of the Missouri School Improvement Program, MSIP 6.

The State Board has used MSIP in its accreditation decisions for Missouri school districts since 1990. Over time, the program has been revised and improved to reflect best practices, the evolving needs of schools, and the changing expectations from students, parents and communities. The current generation is MSIP 5.

The primary change in MSIP 6 would be the addition of leading indicators of performance, such as the investment in and quality of school leaders and teachers, culture and climate, and data-based decision making and instruction.

“You only get to grow up one time, and our children don’t get the chance to do that over,” said State Board of Education member Michael Jones during Tuesday’s discussion. “We have to make quality education a challenge for the state, and we need to continue to find ways to keep getting better.”

Discussions about MSIP 6 began in 2015, and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has gathered input from those both within and outside of education. Standards were then developed in 2016 by six work groups with input from more than 150 people in education, business, higher education and the military. DESE reorganized the standards in 2018 and discussed the proposed standards with the State Board and the public in early 2019. The standards reflect the feedback received.