Taking the reins in difficult times

The State Journal interviewed Interim Education Commissioner Elaine Farris recently. Here's the scoop.

Bio: Elaine Farris

Age: 53

Resides in: Shelbyville

Education: Bachelor's degree and master's degree

from Eastern Kentucky University;

holds Rank I certification

and elementary physical education endorsement;

working toward a doctorate degree at EKU

State Journal: What will your priorities be during your term?

Farris: One of the things that the board has asked to continue to do is to be visible in our schools and districts, so we will continue our focus on improving our low-performing schools and districts. With the budget issues that we're facing, I will continue to have that on our radar screen to see what we need to do to ensure that we are keeping our districts and schools informed of what the budget challenges are for us. Of course, as you well know, we have the challenge of the CATS discussion that's out there, so we will continue to discuss that within the agency and with our
constituency.

State Journal: ...How confident do you feel that they will accept Gov. Steve Beshear's plan to not cut SEEK (Support Education Excellence in Kentucky) funding and to keep the cuts at KDE to a minimum?

Farris: To be real honest with you, I'm optimistic in that they will continue to exclude SEEK. I'm hoping that they will continue to listen to the superintendents and the community stakeholders that if they decide to reduce SEEK that it would have a devastating blow to public education across the state of Kentucky.

State Journal: How devastating would it be?

Farris: Number one, districts will have to cut personnel and (there will be) fewer teachers in the classroom. That means increased class size. Teachers will not be able to have that intense focus on student learning for every student, and with the challenges that we have with trying to improve student achievement across our state, I think that it would have a very direct impact on us moving all students to proficiency by 2014.

State Journal: If that doesn't happen and SEEK is cut, what can the Department of Education do to make that situation more bearable for school districts?

Farris: We will probably have to try to provide a different kind of assistance and support, and what that would look like at this time, I can't give you the details. But we would have to try to provide some support to stop the bleeding...

State Journal: There's the mention of doing away with CATS completely, and there's always talk about No Child Left Behind. What kind of reforms do you think will be beneficial to students?

Farris: One of the things we would like to communicate is that we're not tied to CATS in the way that it is now. However, we would like to keep the premise of the (Kentucky Education) Reform Act, which is performance-based assessment and some type of uniform system assessing our schools and our students.

We understand that accountability is important, and we believe that our parents and our teachers and our school leaders feel the same way - that we have to have some accountability.

Now, how that will look if CATS went away, I am not actually sure. We are having some discussion here at the department that - if this happens - what is it that we would like to see take its place?

One of the things that we have been talking about a lot across the state and within the department is some type of balanced assessment and accountability. We know we need student accountability, we need school accountability, we need formative assessments, we need summative assessments. So we would like to see a balanced assessment and accountability system and not just one type of testing. So we're going to continue to have those discussions within the department and hopefully with our legislators as well.

We have a great window of opportunity to do something great and to have a very improved assessment system. My hope is that we will give ourselves enough time to have discussion across the state so that we can do what's best for kids...