This from Bob Sexton in the Enquirer:The recently enacted state budget is another step backward for Kentucky kids. And it comes at a particularly bad time - just when the state is poised to move student achievement to the next level and help lead the nation on the most important education reforms in a generation.
Our ranking on key indicators of progress has moved from the cellar (43rd in 1992) to closer to the middle (32nd in 2009), according to an index compiled by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. Kentucky students scored above the national average in science, reading and fourth-grade math on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Kentucky legislation enacted in 2009 requiring new, tougher academic standards positioned Kentucky to be the first state to commit to common standards developed by a consortium of 48 states. This summer, Kentucky educators are working to move those higher standards into classroom use, and new statewide tests will be administered in 2012 to reflect the changes.In short, we're setting higher expectations and giving educators more to do, but our schools have fewer resources to work with.
Two cuts deserve special mention. First, cuts in professional development come at the very moment we are asking teachers to master new standards and develop more effective ways to teach them in the classroom. We say, "Learn more, do more," but then we strip away most of the funding to help teachers do that.
Second, the 2012 budget will eliminate all funding for highly skilled educators - people of great talent and expertise who help the state turn around Kentucky's weakest schools. Education Commissioner Terry Holliday had hoped to use these funds to deploy people to help build local capacity to ensure classroom success with the new standards. Instead, the new budget includes bad cuts to the funding we need to implement some very good reforms.
As direct funding to help kids learn is cut, one big thing is still growing - health insurance costs. These show up in the direct cost of employee health insurance, the health-driven share of current retirement premiums, and the state's continuing obligation to pay back the retirement system for the legislature's past borrowing. From 2009 to 2012, those benefit costs will increase by $138 million. Meanwhile everything else the state spends on P-12 education goes down by $107 million.
Clearly, the recession and an outdated revenue system are not the only things undermining Kentucky's ability to do what it needs to do in education. Indeed, the unsustainable growth in health insurance costs could be the worst revenue problem we have.
Kentucky's governor and legislators must do two things if we are to stop eating our seed corn.They must reform our antiquated tax system so state education revenue can keep up with economic growth. And they must get control of spiraling health insurance costs while ensuring that teachers and other public employees receive fair and sustainable benefits. None of this will be easy.
We need more thinking - and action - to meet our obligations to Kentucky's school children and to the future of our commonwealth.
2 comments:
It's disappointing that Sexton continues to cite the KLTPRC's staatistically shaky rankings.
Do you support ranking Kentucky's inaccurate dropout rates against other states? Kentucky still uses a process that was officially audited in 2006 and found to be seriously overstating our real performance?
Many other states have already gotten honest in this area, using high accuracy student tracking programs. Kentucky's student tracking effort (Infinite Campus) is years behind and won't provide the first accurate information until 2013. Let's not crow about how great our rates are before we know with confidence what they actually are.
Do you support the KLTPRC's ranking ACT scores? In 2009 in Maine only 9 percent of the high school graduates took the ACT while in Kentucky 100 percent did. How can you draw any valid conclusions from that?
ACT, Incorporated strongly discourages such ranking nonsense, but KLTPRC continued doing it even after being advised of the ACT, Incorporated's concerns.
There is a lot more wrong with the KLTPRC's rankings, too much to cover here, but I discuss some of the major problems in one of today's Bluegrass Policy Blog items for those who would like to hear the whole story.
By the way, the KLTPRC is gone. The legislature apparently decided they were expendable at this time of fiscal crisis. That may say something about the real value of their research.
Never the less, the KLTPRC's nonsense rankings apparently are going to live on with some KERA fans.
Richard,
I take your point. It's part of the battling reports climate we seem to be living in. We like the validation science gives us, but the overall quality of the science seems always to be suspect.
In too many cases, pseudoscience becomes good enough for political reasons.
My take on the KLTPRC report, which Sexton accurately cited, was that they did use suspect graduation data. They did it for a couple of reasons. First, to leave out graduation data because it was not perfect would have damaged the validity of the study to an even greater extent. As a hedge against that, I suppose, KLTPRC used the nationally accepted (if somewhat inaccurate) graduation calculation. This allowed them to compare states, but arguably, every state's data was inaccurate.
The other thing I should point out is that the KLTPRC study was one of three to show the results Sexton argued. All three studies showed essentially the same relative increase in the state's ranking.
I support the graduation rate fix that is underway. I also understand that ranking states by ACT scores is problematic.
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