Saturday, September 08, 2007

Education reform could be a challenge for state's next governor

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Longtime superintendent Jack Moreland ranks the state's 1990 education reform law as the “high water mark” for Kentucky public education. In more recent times, he said, the state's commitment to schools has wavered somewhat, which worries him.

“The powers that be, whoever that is, will have to take a strong look at revitalizing that commitment, or we're going to wind up being an also-ran,” said Moreland, superintendent of the Covington Independent school system in northern Kentucky.

Moreland and other educators say the winner of Kentucky's Nov. 6 gubernatorial election will face plenty of challenges to fully restore the momentum of the early and mid-1990s in those heady days when the Kentucky Education Reform Act was enacted and implemented.

Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who is seeking re-election, and Democratic challenger Steve Beshear laid out their plans to improve education in responding to an AP questionnaire.

Moreland said the state should put more emphasis on early childhood education and review the school-aid formula and accountability system. Most issues boil down to money, and schools need more of it to meet lofty expectations for student performance, he said.In 1994, 48 percent of the state's general fund budget went to the kindergarten-through-12th grade public system, according to the state Department of Education. By 2002, the percentage of state assistance had slipped to 41 percent, but was up to 44 percent this year.

Fletcher, meanwhile, touts higher state education funding, improved teacher salaries and better student test scores as accomplishments during his first term.“This funding has not just gone blindly into the system, but to establish better tools of accountability,” Fletcher said, adding it will help parents track their children's performance and enable educators to intervene with struggling students “before it's too late.”

Beshear said his goal is to make preschool available to every 3- or 4-year-old Kentucky child on a voluntary basis. Currently, the state limits its preschool funding to those children meeting disability or family income guidelines.Beshear initially wants to raise income qualifications to 200 percent of the federal poverty level - or $41,300 for a family of four - so more Kentuckians can enroll their children in a state-subsidized, half-day preschool program. He eventually wants to make it available to children from higher-income families, which would pay fees on a sliding scale.Beshear also said he wants to “redesign high schools,” providing more opportunities for students to take advanced placement courses while enhancing education standards and developing early interventions for students deemed dropout risks.

“We need more kids graduating from high school, and with higher skill sets and more sophisticated levels of learning,” Beshear said.Beshear said he wants to help larger schools convert to smaller “schools within schools,” saying that students “learn better in smaller schools and smaller classrooms.”

Fletcher and Beshear disagree on whether to single out certain teachers for bonuses.“I have proposed additional teacher compensation that rewards teachers for doing additional work to improve student achievement,” Fletcher said.

In this year's General Assembly session, Fletcher backed legislation that would have provided cash bonuses to teachers whose students did well in AP exams in calculus, physics and chemistry, as well as incentives for such teachers with high scores on certification tests. The legislation failed to win final passage.

Fletcher said he supports tuition assistance for teachers going back to school to become accredited in certain subjects, or tuition forgiveness for teachers working in those subjects.Beshear took a different approach, saying that “valuing the subjects taught by teachers differently in terms of pay seems to create more problems than it solves.”

Beshear said he wants to expand distance learning and called for a comprehensive review to make the education system more efficient by updating and revamping outdated programs.

Fletcher also touted the “Read to Achieve” program championed by his wife, Glenna. He said the reading-assistance efforts are “creating wonderful success stories. The governor said another goal is for teacher pay in Kentucky to gain parity with surrounding states.There have been signs of improvement in Kentucky education in recent years.

Since 1999, Kentucky students have shown across-the-board improvement in reading and math, based on higher scores in the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, or CATS.Kentucky fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have been outperforming the national average. In math, the Kentucky scores have improved but lag behind the national average.“In math, we've got a lot of work to do, and we know that,” said Lisa Gross, a state Department of Education spokeswoman.Scores on the American College Test improved slightly for Kentucky high school seniors who started college this fall, but the state average of 20.7 was below the 21.2 national average.

Still, Marion County schools Superintendent Roger Marcum worries Kentucky has lost momentum of the early to mid-1990s, when he said KERA put the state at the national forefront.“Since that time, we have not been progressing,” he said. “And anytime you are not progressing, you're usually going backward.”

Marcum agrees the current state budget was the best in some time for education, but said much of the additional money went for salary increases, health care and retirement benefits.

Improved pay and benefits are important to retain and attract teachers, he said, but added, “To what extent does that provide services for children?”

Marcum said he considers education at a crossroads in Kentucky, and that policymakers need to restore state funding to levels in the years right after KERA was written.“We're either going to begin to move forward again, or we're going to continue to go backward. And we can't afford that,” he said. “Our kids have one opportunity at a quality education. Once they pass through school, if they don't get it, guess what, they never will.”

This from the Murray Ledger & Times.

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