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Hi. I’m Chris Nicastro, commissioner of education for the state of Missouri.
Thanks for tuning in to this Top 10 by 20 UPDATE.
There are a couple of important milestones I'd like to mention this month.
First, at its June meeting, the State Board of Education expressed its unanimous support
for the fifth cycle of the Missouri School Improvement Plan, or MSIP 5, and the new Scoring Guide.
We’re so excited that over two years of working with parents, educators, associations and administrators,
has produced a scoring guide based on higher standards for Missouri schools.
The scoring guide is a tool the state uses to measure each district's progress toward meeting state standards
and to create each district's Annual Performance Report, or what we call the APR.
Over two decades ago, when MSIP was first developed, many school districts did not meet the new, higher standards.
Today, most have met that bar. MSIP 5 is the next generation of those higher standards.
We've set our sights on achieving top ten status in education and we intend to reach this goal by 2020.
The State Board of Education also approved a one-year pilot of Missouri's new
Educator Evaluation System for the 2012-2013 school year.
This system focuses on the improvement of effective educational practices and the
professional development of teachers, principals and school superintendents.
Once the pilot is complete, the system will be further refined and made available for use
by districts starting with the 2013-14 school year.
You can find the evaluation tools and supporting documents on our website,
as well as sign up to participate as a pilot school.
A number of orientation meetings will be offered to districts beginning in August.
Those dates can also be viewed online.
In addition, the State Board heard a presentation on the revised process for accrediting college
and university educator preparation programs.
Like standards for PK-12, the standards for preparing educators in higher education must also be raised.
Achieving the Top 10 by 20 goal will depend on having the very best prepared educators.
We're very excited to share that Missouri is one of six states selected to participate in the Pathways to Prosperity Network.
This national initiative is designed to build career pathway systems for high-school-aged students.
The focus of this effort is ensuring more students complete high school;
achieve a postsecondary credential or training; and then find a place in the workforce.
A steering committee of businesses and educators will initially focus on the St. Louis region
with the long-term goal of serving students statewide.
We will be engaging more employers and educators to help build these pathways as we move forward in this process.
Last, the Department's School Administrators Conference is at the end of this month.
This year's conference will be held July 29-31 in Columbia.
If you have not registered, we strongly encourage you to sign up.
There are a number of important session topics, including initial training on the new Educator Evaluation System.
We also have two well-known speakers in education, Andreas Schleicher and Robert Marzano.
As mentioned before, we're offering a discounted registration fee for those school districts
that bring three or more individuals. We encourage you to bring your entire team.
The deadline for online registration is July 20, so please take advantage of this terrific opportunity.
Thank you for keeping up-to-date with state education this summer.
I hope to see you at the conference in a few weeks.