Missouri

GPA 0.94

State rank: 34th

Overall
Grade

• Overview
• Elevate
  Teaching
• Empower
  Parents
• Spend Wisely
  & Govern Well

Currently, Missouri's education policies do not prioritize great teaching, empowering parents with quality choices, or allocating resources wisely to raise student achievement. The state is behind when it comes to enacting critical education reforms. Missouri has moved to improve its educator evaluations, but the new system is not meaningful, and districts are not required to link student performance, educator performance, and personnel decisions. The state should free teachers locked into the state's existing pension systems by offering more attractive, portable retirement options. Missouri could empower parents more by providing meaningful information regarding school and teacher performance. The state recently strengthened accountability for public charter schools and expanded authorization, both positive steps forward. State policy should prioritize the establishment and replication of high-performing schools as well. Finally, Missouri should allow mayors to take control in low-performing districts and strengthen the state's ability to intervene in low-performing schools.

Where Missouri Ranks

GPA

Missouri Fast Facts

Stats, 2010–11

STUDENTS	918,710
SCHOOL DISTRICTS	567
SCHOOLS	2,410
PUBLIC CHARTERS	53

NAEP Scale Score Rank, 2011

4TH GRADE	MATH	READING
	27	31
8TH GRADE	MATH	READING
	32	24

NAEP Proficiency, 2011

58%

42%

66%

34%

4TH GRADE

MATH

READING

Fast Facts Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2011 Mathematics and Reading Assessments.

Elevate
Teaching

State rank: 39th

GPA 0.73

Missouri is behind when it comes to ensuring effective teachers and principals are identified, retained, and rewarded by districts. Missouri does not require districts to evaluate educators in a meaningful way. Although student academic growth plays an undefined role in evaluations, evaluations lack annual frequency and there are no consequences for poor performance. Seniority drives personnel decisions, allowing other states to pass Missouri by in efforts to improve teacher quality and elevate the profession. If Missouri wants to strengthen its teaching corps, it must treat them like the professionals they are by establishing meaningful annual evaluations tied significantly to student growth and requiring districts to use teacher effectiveness as the driving factor in recruitment, placement, layoff, tenure, and compensation decisions. The state should also improve the selectivity and quality of its alternative certification pathways.

Empower
Parents

State rank: 9th

GPA 1.24

All families should have the information and access they need to provide a quality education for their children, and no student should be forced to attend a low-performing school or be taught by a low-performing teacher. Therefore, Missouri must empower parents to take action by providing meaningful information on school performance and more high-quality school choice options. Missouri must require PK-12 schools to receive an annual report card that includes an A-F letter grade based on student achievement data. Also, the state should require parental consent if a student is placed with an ineffective teacher and grant parents the power to petition local school districts to turn around failing schools. The state must do more to increase high-quality school choice options by removing restrictions on charter school growth, strengthening charter accountability policies, and creating a publicly funded scholarship program for low-income students in chronically failing public schools to attend private schools.

Spend
Wisely

State rank: 45th

GPA 0.89

Missouri is not permitting its districts to use resources wisely and has yet to develop strong accountability measures. The state may undertake limited intervention in schools that lose accreditation, but Missouri should establish stronger models that enable robust state authority and targeted mayoral control for other low-performing schools and districts. To enhance transparency and accountability and promote data-driven decisionmaking, Missouri should require districts to link spending to academic achievement and allow governance changes when resources are mismanaged. To provide all teachers with career flexibility and retirement security, Missouri should move to fully portable retirement plans.

Dear Jenni,

Fur-Free Friday was a raging success this year, with more than 60 protests in the U.S. and Canada to protest the use of fur as well as leather, wool, down, and exotic skins! Check out these articles from San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Philadelphia; Chicago; Concord, N.H.; and Long Island, N.Y. as well as these two from Beachwood, Ohio.

Here are some photos from protests across the U.S. to inspire you to speak up for animals all winter long and beyond:






I'd love to help you get active for animals by sending you free leaflets about animals killed to make fur garments and other clothing items. You can pass the leaflets out and make a difference for animals just as the people in the photos did! Please let me know how I can help you. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,








Lauren Stroyeck
Action Team Coordinator
LaurenS@peta.org
757-962-8205
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Make a Resolution for Happy and Healthy Pets in 2013

Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - 3:00pm

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Happy new year from all of us here at the ASPCA! As you set your resolutions for 2013, don’t forget to consider ways to improve your pet’s wellbeing, too. Providing a little bit of extra grooming or playtime for your pet can go a long way. We suggest you start by making a few simple resolutions that will keep your furry friends healthy and happy from January to December.
Here are some easy ways to get started:
Exercise time! Before you rush to join a gym, consider ways to incorporate your pet into your new workout routine. Healthy adult dogs need at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise twice a day—jogging, swimming and playing at the dog park are all great options. Engage your cat with rousing play sessions of chase and fetch with furry toys, small balls or toy mice.
Battle the bulge. Humans aren’t the only ones who might need to cut back on excess food after the holidays. This year, vow to lay off those table scraps and consider switching your cat or dog to a well-balanced, high-quality pet food.
Schedule a check-up. Give your veterinarian the chance to notice any developing illnesses by scheduling regular check-ups for your pet. If it’s been a year or more since your pet has seen a vet, make an appointment today!
IDs, please! Get an updated look by outfitting all of your animal companions—even indoor pets—with an ID tag. Implanted microchips are also a smart option.
Want to make a resolution to help homeless animals in 2013? Consider becoming an ASPCA Guardian. For just a few cents a day, you can make a big impact for animals.  

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Pet Care

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Leaked Video: Live Goats' Legs Cut Off With Tree Trimmers

Each year, more than 10,000 live animals are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in horrific military training exercises that are supposed to simulate injuries on the battlefield. But the training exercises that are taking place in these highly secret courses bear no resemblance to real battlefield conditions—and they don't help soldiers save the lives of their injured comrades.
In disturbing, never-before-seen undercover video footage leaked to PETA showing a Coast Guard training course in Virginia Beach, Virginia, instructors with a company called Tier 1 Group, which was hired by the military, are seen breaking and cutting off the limbs of live goats with tree trimmers, stabbing the animals, and pulling out their internal organs. Goats moan and kick during the mutilations—signs that they had not received adequate anesthesia.
During this cruel exercise, one Tier 1 Group instructor is heard cheerfully whistling on the video as he cuts off goats' legs and a Coast Guard participant callously jokes about writing songs about mutilating the animals.
Later in the day, according to the distraught whistleblower who came to PETA, goats were shot in the face with pistols and hacked apart with an ax while still alive.
Following official complaints from PETA about this disturbing video footage, which showed Tier 1 Group instructors failing to provide adequate anesthesia to goats who were stabbed and cut into, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited and issued an official warning to Tier 1 Group for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act.
Additionally, the Virginia Beach Zoning Administration sent a letter of warning to the owner of the property where the training allegedly took place, notifying him that these exercises are not permitted there and that legal action may be pursued against him if such unauthorized activities are conducted on the land in the future.
Cruel exercises like these continue regularly across the U.S. even though most civilian facilities and many military facilities have already replaced animal laboratories with superior lifelike simulators that breathe, bleed, and even "die."
The Army's own Rascon School of Combat Medicine at Fort Campbell does not use animals in its training program and has even publicly stated that "[t]raining on [simulators] is more realistic to providing care for a person than training on animals." The Air Force's Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills and the Navy Trauma Training Center also do not use animals to train soldiers, and nearly 80 percent of NATO allies have informed PETA that they do not use animals for military medical training.

Department of Defense regulations actually require that alternatives to animals be used when available, but this policy is not being enforced.
Unlike mutilating and killing animals, training on simulators allows medics and soldiers to practice on accurate anatomical models and repeat vital procedures until all trainees are confident and proficient. Studies show that medical care providers who learn trauma treatment using simulators are better prepared to treat injured patients than those who are trained using animals. A leading surgeon with the U.S. Army even candidly admitted in an internal e-mail obtained by PETA that "there still is no evidence that [training on animals] saves lives."
For all these reasons, the Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act (H.R. 1417/S. 3418), which would phase out the U.S. military's use of live animals in trauma training in favor of modern non-animal methods, has been introduced in Congress.
Please help improve military training and spare the thousands of animals who are tormented each year in these cruel exercises by using the form below to send polite e-mails to U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security officials urging them to take immediate action to comply with federal regulations and completely replace the use of animals in military trauma training with superior non-animal training methods.

Peace Begins Now by David Krieger December 20, 2012

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This article was originally published as an interview in The Moon.
Given the history of military spending and engagement on the part of the United States, it may seem naïve to think that Americans are ready to change course—or begin again—on issues of peace and disarmament.  But as I write this, there is promising political support to put military spending on the table in order to move toward balancing the federal budget. Even more important, the public is realizing that nine years of war in Iraq and eleven years of war in Afghanistan have accomplished very little for the cost of the lives lost and destroyed and the trillions of dollars spent. We’ve tried controlling the world through military means and it has failed. 
Failure forces us to find new ways of resolving conflict—by turning enemies into friends. We need to apply the example of a conscientious adult who tells a frustrated child to “use your words, not your fists,” because any war in the Nuclear Age has the potential to become a nuclear war with uncertain, but surely catastrophic, consequences. 
As humans, our primary responsibility is to pass this beautiful planet on intact to new generations that will follow us. Hopefully, it will not require an apocalypse to move humanity toward creating a saner and more just world. This is why we have imaginations. We don’t need to experience a nuclear war or the melting of the Arctic ice to understand that the consequences would be catastrophic.
The threads that humanity might use to create a more peaceful world are our desire for justice, our love of beauty, our appreciation for our planetary home. There can be no peace without justice, and there can be no justice in a world divided between the very rich and those too poor to enjoy even the necessities of life. All human beings, regardless of borders, are entitled to the basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  These cannot be relegated to historical values or aspirational values; they must be values we live by now.
We must repudiate the so-called “realists” who have led us to the brink of disaster through strategies and technologies of mass annihilation. We must reclaim the power of choice: we can follow these realists over the cliff, or we can step back and assert our humanity. We can stop basing our perceived security on the threat to murder hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people.
We have seen the face of absolute war – war from which there is no recovery, no survival.  Is that the world we wish to pass on to our children and grandchildren?  Surely most people would say No, and rebel against the path we are on. This will not be easy, but it is certainly possible. All it requires is awakening to our nuclear dilemma – one in which we are both potential victims and executioners. 
Our challenge is to find our way out of the Nuclear Age. We need leaders who can help us find a new path to a better world. Each of us has the potential to be such a leader. Peace leaders use the tools of persuasion and nonviolence. They lead with discipline, but their power derives from the heart and is based upon empathy, compassion and love. 
Although new beginnings can arise from the ashes of bad endings, where nuclear war is concerned, it would be far preferable for a new beginning to arise from new wisdom. I agree with Albert Einstein, who warned, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Where better to find new wisdom than in the hearts and voices of young people?
I’ve always thought that if the young were to take up the cause of ridding the world of nuclear weapons, they would be successful where adults have failed. Too many adults believe that nuclear weapons are tied to peace and security. Young people can more clearly see that nuclear weapons undermine security for all—and particularly for those with longer future horizons. If enough young people were to raise their voices for the abolition of these weapons, I think that the public, political leaders and the international community would have no choice but to listen and act.
Success will require far greater public engagement, political will and international cooperation than we are accustomed to, but the alternative is unthinkable. That’s why I believe the beginning of peace is near…in fact, is now.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

The Seattle Times, November 26, 2012
California farmers want orcas taken off endangered-species list
California farmers have filed a petition to take Puget Sound's killer whales off the endangered-species list, arguing they are not a separate population.
By Lynda V. Mapes

California farmers want to take Puget Sound's killer whales off the endangered-species list, arguing they are not a separate population and that protecting the fish they eat is hurting business.
The listing of the animals as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2005 caused cutbacks in irrigation to protect fish, and that's made it harder to get loans from banks, pay help and expand their operations, argues a petition filed by Empresa de Bosque and Coburn Ranch. The two farms raise a variety of crops, from cherries to almonds, melons and tomatoes, using irrigation water from several California water districts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The listing of Puget Sound's orcas has affected farmers in California because the southern resident orcas travel the outer West Coast in winter, and are known to feed on salmon as far south as the Sacramento River.
The petition to delist was filed on the farmers' behalf by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit based in Sacramento that has built a $25 million business fighting endangered-species listings, environmental restrictions, Title IX funding for high-school sports, affirmative action in public-sector contracting and more.
The foundation, with its motto "Rescuing liberty from coast to coast," operates regional offices in Bellevue, Hawaii and Florida. It is funded with individual contributions and awards of attorneys' fees.
NOAA Fisheries announced Monday it had accepted the petition and would finish by August a status review of the southern resident population of killer whales to determine if listing is still warranted.
Donna Darm, assistant administrator for protected resources at NOAA, said new science, including findings published in peer-reviewed journals since the orca was listed, warrants a new look at the listing. The decision to consider the petition does not indicate what the outcome of the review will be, she noted.
If the animals were taken off the endangered-species list, designation of critical habitat for them would disappear, but other protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, including a requirement the animals not be harassed or harmed, and that whale-watch vessels keep 200 yards away, would remain in effect.
NOAA Fisheries' listing of orcas as endangered came a year after it listed the animals as threatened in 2004. It had decided in 2002 not to list them at all. The agency initially determined the southern resident killer whales of Puget Sound, in J, K and L pods, were not a distinct population segment.
That finding was set aside by a U.S. District Court judge in 2003, who ruled there was enough uncertainty in the science to give the matter more study. The agency convened a science task force that eventually found the southern resident killer-whale population to be a distinct population, resulting in the 2005 listing.
Since then, the agency has designated 2,560 square miles of Puget Sound critical habitat for killer whales; required whale-watch vessels to keep a longer distance from the animals; and produced a recovery plan. But the southern resident population remains quite small, with only about 86 animals.
Fred Felleman, of Seattle, who in 2001 advocated for the original petition for listing, said the petition now to delist the orcas is a distraction from the necessary work of rebuilding orca populations.
"Oh great, here is a chance to biopsy them and tag them and chase them all over town until we don't have to worry about them any more," Felleman said.
To him, the distinct behavior of the southern residents sets them clearly apart from other orcas. They eat only fish, while other orcas eat seals and other mammals. They have distinct family groups, dialects, greeting ceremonies and migratory patterns.
"If there was ever a poster child for this type of subspecies, it's the killer whales," he said. "It's not just their genetics, it's culture. These clearly are the tribes of the sea, and if you extirpate that population not only do you lose the genetic code, you lose a unique brain trust."
In its petition, Pacific Legal Foundation stated there are about 50,000 killer whales roaming all the oceans of the world. Puget Sound's J, K and L pods comprise less than 0.2 percent of the species and, being such a small part of a larger population from which they are not distinct, protection is not warranted, the firm argued.
Miyoko Sakashita of the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued to get the animals listed, said the petition to delist is just a rehash of old arguments. NOAA's decision to list was right, she said. "I am sure when they take another look at the science they will affirm protection."
Seattle Times news researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report. Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.
Copyright ©2012 The Seattle Times Company.